Alrighty then, here we go. I have created the "fedora-minimal" mailing list at simpaticus.com, whose stated purpose is to determine what is the minimum PRACTICAL set of packages for a Fedora Core 1 installation.
By "practical" I mean that we do not want a system that just boots and then stares at you, having been crippled beyond any ability to do useful work. Rather, the search is for a system which is still usable but trimmed of any unnecessary fat. This "minimal" system will include the following capabilities:
- Standard Fedora kernel - RPM - a bash shell, iptables, other truly basic packages - as little else as possible
I just updated a script that I've had since the days when it was actually possible to do a minimal install on a Zip disk, and made an attempt to do so. Installed kernel and glibc, wiped out the i18n stuff, and proceeded to install sysvinit, bash, mingetty, cron, initscripts, iptables, and their dependencies. Won't fit on a Zip100 any more. Looks like the minimum amount of space needed may be around 200MB (bearing in mind, that's after you stip off the i18n files). You might be able to get it on a Zip250, but I don't have one of those handy. :)
The best way to approach this is probably just to create a directory where you're going to install the software, and use "rpm -ivh --root" to get the packages there. Once you've got the software you do want, search through and prune what you don't want.
