Minimax 20060326 Beta review

Minimax is a Linux distribution which completely fit to an initrd image, because of this it can boot in every situation, which you ca

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 33116K Developer: Jan Kotek

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Minimax is a Linux distribution which completely fit to an initrd image, because of this it can boot in every situation, which you can imagine.

It is ultra small (32 MB), but very power full. Minimax distribution contains 2.6 kernel with ALL modules and balanced set of console utils, no X server.

Here are some key features of "Minimax":
Very small, only 32 MB
Very good hardware support, see kernel config.
Fits to initrd, can boot on strange SCSI/SATA/USB disks
Can be added to /boot partition very easy
System runs from ramdisk
Contains only console utils, no x server, see packages
Modern architecture: kernel 2.6, udev with autosymlinks, module autoloading, based on Arch linux
Based on uclibc and busybox

Some key software:

Full 2.6.15 kernel with modules, with autodetection and udev. Takes about 60% of livecd size.
Installer for Arch linux
wifi drivers and utils: hostap,wlan-ng, madwifi, ndiswrapper...
Grub as main bootloader
Midnight Commander
Links2 - text and graphic web browser
FBI - an image viewer
IRSSI - an irc client
CenterICQ - an excelent client for icq,msn,jabber...
Music on console - player with mp3,ogg and online streaming support
Bash burn - an cd record console frontend
Partimage - disk mirroring tool

Minimum requirements:

64 MB RAM (system needs 32 MB big ramdisk).
An i386 or better processor.
Hardware compatible with 2.6.15 kernel, for very old computers (486) is Damm small linux or Puppy linux better choice, becouse of 2.4 kernel

How was it made?

I take uclibc and busybox (software for embedded linux) and compile base system from scratch. I add initscripts from Arch linux, they are very easy to understand and modify. With some other software and modular kernel 2.6 I got system with about 70 MB. After compression with squashfs I got 30 MB big initrd image. Now it was easy to create an CD image.

Packages

minimax , bash, busybox, dhcpcd, e2fsprogs, filesystem, gpm, initscripts, kdm, kernel, libz, module-init-tools, ncurses, net-utils, sysvinit, uclibc, udev, utils, archsetup, snarf, rsync, vsftpd, dd_rescue, dd_rhelp, dosfstools, ext2resize, grub, jetcat, jfsutils, lilo, ntfsprogs, parted, partimage, reiserfsprogs, squashfs-tools, xfsprogs, bastet, enigma, fbi, libexif, libgif, libjpeg, libpng, links, libbz2, libc++, libcom_err, libexpat, libnet, libpcap, libpcre, libtool, *, alsa-lib, alsa-utils, bashburn, cdrdao, cdrtools, dvd+rw-tools, libao, libid3tag, libmad, libogg, libvorbis, moc, shfs, biew, centericq, glib, htop, irssi, mc, nano, ncurses, nstats, screen, dnstracer, iplog, iptables, libpcap, netcat, ngrep, nmap, openssh, openssl, tcpdump, autossh, bc, curl, file, hdparm, pciutils, ppp, pv, raidtools, tcptraceroute, wget, x86info, atmel-firmware, drivers_in_kernel, hostap-utils, ipw2100-firmware, ipw2200-firmware, linux-wlan-ng, linux-wlan-ng-firmware, linux-wlan-ng-utils, madwifi-tools, ndiswrapper, prism54-firmware, wireless-tools, zd1201-firmware, zd1211