i know the whole ubuntu philosophy is to give you a fully working system. the only drawback is the size: 4.3 gb. Is there a distribution that fits on a 2gb memory stick (i'd like to use that as the main boot drive) and is as user friendly as ubuntu is (preferably gnome)? i tried DSM, knoppix and a whole lot of other distributions, but they where either to big (didn't fit) or weren't user friendly enough for me to be able to work with it. in the end: i have an old laptop that needs to run a java program i wrote, and later on has to serve as backup server. tnx in advance edit: i found something called ubuntu-mini-remix i got it running in a live session this time, but i have no way of installing it. on the site i am told to remaster it and add installer (and i would like to add an GUI too, if possible). how do i do that? edit2: i found another thing called Ubuntu customisation kit. after installing(only on linux) it (in command line: sudo apt-get install uck) and finally being able to run it, it is now apparently remastering the mini remix .iso . i'll keep you updated edit3: one reason or another, it doesn't want to work, it errors, always, for different reasons. help is appriciated
Try Arch linux, you can select what to install, leaving a powerful, but with small foot-print than others distros. I used to have a full Debian in 1gb pendrive and it was Ok. Try to run programs as Localepurge that erases all unneeded/unwanted locales saving a lot of space. You have several small distros like puppy, feather... But most of them don't use gnome for obvious reasosn.
If all you want is easy-to-use distro with a small HDD footprint you could try (in order of how much I like them): Puppy (just awesome, it's not GNOME but just as easy to use and automatic wizards for everything) TinyCore (Very small and weird to run, but ~10MB install space if you try hard) DSL (Damn Small Linux is ~50Mb and about the smallest 'full' desktop you can get) Crunchbang Lite (I use full-fat #! on my netbook) And there's TinyMe, which I've never used but seems to tick all the right boxes. HTH.
As Kumo says debian is much more configurable (which can lead to its own problems) and can easily be run on a small footprint. Problem is Gnome is a pretty heavy group of programs which limits how compact a gnome based system can be. If you just select Gnome desktop (or something like that) from aptitude then you'll get a huge install you'll have to add the windows manager and applications separately.
