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This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.

Content:

- Review: Vanilla OS 3 "Reunion"

- News: Asahi Linux works on M3-powered Apple computers, FreeBSD tests new service manager, Arch seeks help triaging bugs, openSUSE introduces tool to compare package versions, Linux Mint updates XApp, Debian publishes media update

- Questions and answers: The smallest possible Linux

- Released last week: FreeBSD 14.5, Spaced Linux 9.26, Ubuntu 24.04.5

- Torrent corner: TUXEDO OS, Ubuntu

- Upcoming releases: Fedora 45 Beta

- Opinion poll: How small was the smallest Linux you have used?

- Reader comments

Most images (except NVIDIA images due to kernel modules) are now fully reproducible, meaning the build process always produces bit-for-bit identical images from the same sources.There have been some changes to the update process too:

With so many changes to default apps since Vanilla OS 2 Orchid, we've introduced a new update mode in First Setup. It runs automatically after an upgrade, allowing you to install new apps and uninstall old ones. Just a few clicks to confirm the changes, and you're ready to enjoy the latest Vanilla OS experience.I downloaded the x86_64 build of Vanilla which is 1.8GB in size. I soon found that the distribution runs in UEFI mode only. Trying to boot in Legacy BIOS mode will start a graphical environment and display a message saying the system will install in UEFI mode only. Then the system will reboot before it reaches the GNOME desktop.

While immutability protects the system, your data is a whole different story. That's why in Reunion we introduced Vanilla Continuity, a new snapshot-based backup and restore tool that is now part of the image and works together with ABRoot. It saves your home directories, the list of installed Flatpak apps and ABRoot metadata, then restores them when needed.

When running in UEFI mode the distribution launches a graphical environment and displays a welcome window. We are given the choice of installing Vanilla OS, installing a custom image, running a recovery mode, or powering off the computer. The system reportedly requires 4GB of RAM and over 50GB of disk space in order to install the distribution, though both of these numbers (as I will point out later in this review) are inflated.

Installing

Vanilla uses a custom, graphical system installer. We are first asked to pick our preferred language from a list, then choose our keyboard from another list, and our timezone from a third list. We can then select which hard drive to use for storing Vanilla OS. The distribution offers guided partitioning which will take over an entire disk or manual partitioning. The manual option offers to launch the GParted application to help us organize the disk.

The installer offers to enable encryption on our partition and, if we accept, it will get us to make up a password to unlock the disk. The installer copies its files to the drive and then, in my case, it reported success. The system then reboots.

The first time Vanilla OS boots it launches a first-run welcome wizard. We are asked to name our computer, make up a username and password combination, and then we are shown a graphical login screen. The login page has accessibility options for displaying larger text, using an on-screen keyboard, running a screen reader, and displaying fonts in a high contrast.

Once we login we are presented with the GNOME 50 desktop. Another first-run wizard then launches and offers to enable accessibility options and choose between a light and dark theme (the light theme is selected by default). The next screen asks us to select the applications we want to run, with the categories labelled Core, Browsers, Common, and Office. We can click a button next to each category to see which applications it includes. We can then further customize the selection by toggling specific applications. For example, clicking on the Browsers category reveals Firefox is selected by default. However, there are several other options we can choose to install, including Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Floorp, LibreWolf, Zen, Edge, and Vivaldi. The Office category offers LibreOffice and OnlyOffice. Once we have made our selections the welcome window displays progress while our new applications are fetched and installed.

Once we have our applications installed the welcome window offers to return us to the GNOME desktop or start a tour, by running GNOME Tour. The Tour application offers to configure the frequency of update checks. It also offers to open the software centre so we can install yet more applications. We're told APX is installed to assist us with development and that the "super key" will display an overview of the desktop. The Tour then offers to open the settings panel to help us customize the desktop.

There are a few more screens to navigate. The Tour window will offer to configure cloud accounts and suggests we can visit the Vanilla OS blog to see news updates. I clicked the blog button and this opened the web browser which had its own five configuration screens to walk through. For those keeping track at home, this was welcome/configure process number five in my journey.

Eventually, I got through all the first-run items and was presented with the GNOME desktop. GNOME places a thin panel across the top of the screen where we can find the overview button, a clock, and the system tray. Pressing the super/meta key or clicking the overview button causes a dock to appear at the bottom of the display where we can launch commonly used programs or open a full screen application menu.

Hardware

The distribution worked smoothly when I ran it in VirtualBox. The system integrated well with the virtual environment and I didn't have any problems with Vanilla. When I ran the distribution on my laptop the experience was also fairly good. Audio, networking, and keyboard shortcut keys were all detected and worked. My touchpad translated taps into mouse clicks. By default the screen was quite dim, set at about 25% brightness, but this could be fixed by using the keyboard shortcut keys. As I mentioned above, the distribution installs in UEFI mode only.

Measuring disk usage is a bit strange. Vanilla OS sets up several Btrfs volumes, temporary filesystems, overlays, and containers. The output from the mount command lists 201 mounted filesystems! As best as I could tell, Vanilla OS requires about 14GB of disk space when it is first installed, a far cry short of the 50GB the installer demands. However, with the update images, Btrfs snapshots, and Flatpak bundles Vanilla requires, disk space will be consumed quickly.

When signed into GNOME, Vanilla uses about 1.4GB of RAM. This is on the heavy side, though it is not unusual for GNOME running a Wayland session. The distribution does not enable a swap file or partition by default, but it does create a zRAM virtual device in RAM. This allows the operating system to compress unused memory in a corner of RAM for quick access.

Applications

The applications which will be available on Vanilla OS will vary depending on our choices at install time. We could have virtually no applications, apart from a terminal, file manager, and the GNOME settings panel if we opted for a light setup. However, mostly sticking with the default options gave me a web browser (Vivaldi, in my case), the GNOME Files file manager, a calendar, clock, weather application, audio player, weather app, and video player. Both media players worked for me and were able to handle the video and audio files I threw at them. I decided to install LibreOffice which was available alongside an image viewer, text editor, and resource monitor.

Vanilla ships with manual pages, the GNU command line tools, and the GNU Compiler Collection. The distribution uses systemd for init and service management functions and runs version 7.1 of the Linux kernel.

The distribution runs the bash shell by default for interactive work and there are virtually no aliases enabled, apart from one to add colour to the output of the ls command.

Software management

The desktop software included in Vanilla is mostly supplied by Flatpak bundles, pulled from the Flathub repository. By default about two dozen of these bundles are installed. We can fetch additional software using the GNOME Software application. This software centre uses a three-tab approach. The first tab allows us to explore available applications and download them. The second tab shows installed programs and assists us in removing them. The third tab displays any updates and assists us with installing new versions.

I found GNOME Software worked well for me and without errors. The interface is pleasantly arranged and fetching new programs requires just a few clicks. The software centre is a touch slow compared to some other software managers, such as Discover and Linux Mint's equivalent, but I had no problems while using it.

I'd like to note that each user appears to have their own copy of Flatpak packages, which means each user can have their own version of a program and install or remove applications for their account without affecting the programs available to other users.

I was curious about managing low-level software. On immutable distributions it is often common to supply portable packages (Flatpak or Snap bundles) as add-ons while keeping the base system fixed. Other distributions provide some sort of low-level tool for layering on extra packages. Vanilla OS tries to make adding and managing low-level packages seamless. When we open a virtual terminal the terminal appears to run inside a container. This means we can install software in the terminal using Debian's APT package manager and run command line tools. Since we can access our home directory from inside the container, this makes it seem as though we are installing new programs on Vanilla OS while really we're placing them in an add-on environment and the system is handling the situation transparently.

APX

One of the key features of Vanilla OS which gets mentioned on the website and in one of the welcome windows that first greets us, is APX. The project devotes several documentation pages to APX. The Getting Started page talks about how to install APX on other distributions. We don't need this since it is bundled with Vanilla OS.

The Introduction page gives a quick overview of APX: "APX is a versatile command-line interface (CLI) tool designed to simplify the management of operating system containers. With a focus on efficiency and user-friendliness, APX empowers users to create, manage, and customize containers for a variety of applications and services." This is a decent big-picture description, but I still wasn't sure what APX actually does in practical terms.

There is another page for working with package managers which tells us how to teach APX about package managers it might not already know. Apparently APX knows something about how certain popular package managers work. However, the documentation doesn't explain what to do with this information once we teach APX or what to do with the package manager information already baked into the application. There is yet another page about working with types of containers, but again no practical information about what APX does in these situations or why we would use it. There are no practical, hands on examples or goals mentioned.

The package managers APX knows about (dnf, apk, pacman, etc) are not on the system. I thought maybe APX could be used to manage these package managers inside containers. However, after reading five sections of the handbook and browsing the APX built-in help screens I could not find any examples of this or how APX is meant to be used.

There is a graphical tool for APX. I launched it and found it just provides the same list of supported package managers and containers as the command line tool. Using the graphical interface I could not find any hints as to what it was meant to be used for or why it is considered a key component of Vanilla OS. All of this is to say that APX might be useful and it might be interesting, but I could not find any information about why people would use it or practical steps for doing so. The documentation throws around buzzwords, such as "simplify" and "efficiency", but not what is being simplified or how or why people would benefit from using it.

Other observations

At one point during my trial I created a second user account. With this new account I could sign into GNOME and the system ran me through the same welcome experience, asking me to select which applications I wanted. (Each user has their own set of Flatpak bundles.) For the most part, running this second user account worked and I could fetch and run applications. The exception was the virtual terminal. When the second user tried to open a terminal window a message would appear indicating it was setting up a container. Then a brief message would appear saying setting up the environment failed and the terminal window would close.

This feels like an odd limitation or oversight: not allowing any users apart from the first one run a terminal window. It makes me wonder if anyone on the Vanilla team has tried running a system with more than one user.

Vanilla OS 3 -- Running the command line APX tool

(full image size: 2.9MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)

Conclusions

What I found intriguing, and sometimes frustrating, during my trial with Vanilla OS was that the distribution seems to be implementing some interesting concepts - even some complex and technically challenging concepts - and mostly doing it well, but none of it benefited me as a user. The distribution adds the complexity of immutability, but that's not helpful for me, that's something I need to work around. It's not as though the system being immutable is going to make the Debian base, of all things, more stable. Instead all it does is gum up the works when I try to run a terminal as the second user.

The website and documentation talk a bit about APX, but none of it is useful information or provides any hint as to how it will make my computing experience better. In a similar vein, I went through five welcome screens and first-run configuration guides which, I'm sure, could be helpful for beginners, but it just meant I spent an extra five or ten minutes setting up my system. Since Vanilla isn't targeting beginners (their focus is on developer tools and containers) gearing their welcoming processes toward newcomers feels off brand.

Ultimately, Vanilla OS experiments with some technologies well, it makes running Debian with a layer of containers work (mostly) smoothly. As a proof of concept, it's a solid demonstration. Vanilla does a good job of layering tools like Flatpak on top of a Debian base. The question I kept asking myself throughout my trial though was: how does this help me use my computer? For me, the complexities added by Vanilla just impeded what I was doing, in ways Debian would not. Vanilla is heavier, it is more complex, it layers tools like Btrfs, zRAM, and Flatpaks which use up more resources. Vanilla sets up more mount points, runs more wizards, includes more container technology. All of this is interesting, but it doesn't make my computing experience or development processes faster or smoother or better in any practical way that I can find. Mostly, it made me want to switch to running the distribution's parent, Debian, to get the same underlying benefits without the extra layers and resource consumption.

* * * * *

Hardware used in this reviewMy physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following specifications:

- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz

- Display: Intel integrated video

- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive

- Memory: 8GB of RAM

- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card

* * * * *

Visitor supplied ratingVanilla OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 6.5/10 from 37 review(s).

Have you used Vanilla OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.

* * * * *

Over the years there have been a number of discussions in the FreeBSD community regarding service management and possible alternatives to the current rc tools for launching services. Some alternatives have been tested over the years, including running OpenRC in the GhostBSD desktop offshoot of FreeBSD. Baptiste Daroussin has another option which is ready to test. The new tool, called rcd, imports a lot of the beneficial ideas from systemd while avoiding the pain points systemd has inflicted. "rcd(8) is a service manager daemon called by init(8) (in place of /etc/rc). It reads service definitions from UCL unit files (/etc/rcd.d/*.ucl), builds a dependency DAG, and starts services in parallel. After boot completes, it forks to background and stays running as a supervision daemon (automatically restarting failed services and accepting control commands via a UNIX socket)." The post from Daroussin goes on to share information on how to install and run rcd, list key features, and the message points out rcd is 100% compatible with the existing rc service manager, making switching between the two seamless.* * * * *

Frederik Schwan of the Arch Linux project has put out a call for volunteers to help Arch deal with bug reports. Many projects have seen a surge in bug tickets in recent months, due to LLM-created reports, and Arch is hoping to get help triaging bugs submitted to their GitLab account. "We are searching for additional helping hands on our GitLab. Offering sources for thousands of packages requires triaging (and sometimes closing) the many issues that users report over time. As a bug wrangler you would be helping the distribution with triaging tickets across all package source repositories and assigning them to relevant package maintainers, as well as closing invalid ones and/or investigating the topics at hand (if applicable)." The post includes contact information where people can reach out to volunteer.* * * * *

If you have ever wanted to compare the package versions between openSUSE's Leap and Tumbleweed branches and didn't want to manually compare the versions yourself, we have the DistroWatch package comparison page. This page will display the upstream stable version of a package as well as provide the package versions for any two distributions, or any two versions of a distribution. Now, alternatively, the openSUSE project provides its own implementation of this feature to compare packages between openSUSE Leap and openSUSE Tumbleweed. "The tool pulls the archive indexes straight from download.opensuse.org; this is for open-source software (oss) and non-oss, x86_64 and noarch and it's done for Tumbleweed, Leap 16.1, and Leap 16.0; then it compares the upstream version of every source package it finds. The result is a single sortable, filterable table with a timestamp on it." The new osdiff tool is now live and provides a filter for narrowing down the list of compared packages.* * * * *

The Linux Mint project maintains a collection of applications, called XApp, which are desktop-neutral forks of GNOME applications. The XApps now have their own website to make it easier to discover and learn about the applications. "The XApp project started within Linux Mint but it has grown a lot since then. Its libraries, tools and applications are used in many desktops and distributions. It was given a new website to make it easier to discover all its components. Thingy, known as the 'Library' in the desktop, was redesigned. Until now, documents were grouped by application. For instance, PDF files and all the other document types supported by XReader were grouped together under 'Document Viewer'. The library now organizes documents by type instead. It no longer matters which applications are installed or which formats they support." Further information is provided in the Linux Mint monthly newsletter.* * * * *

The Debian project has published updated install media for Debian 13 "Trixie". "The Debian project is pleased to announce the seventh update of its stable distribution Debian 13 (codename Trixie). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 13 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old Trixie media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror."* * * * *

These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.DistroWatch answers: For the sake of comparison, Microsoft says the minimal system requirements for Windows 11 are: a dual-core, 64-bit x86_64 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. Even the heavier Linux distributions require about half those resources to perform a full install and then run a desktop and a web browser.

Linux distributions can get really small! The smallest Linux distribution I've run on my own machines was about 1.4MB in size (that's megabytes, not gigabytes). It was called Tom's Root Boot and ran from a 3.5-inch floppy disk. It was quite minimal. It included the Linux kernel with minimal features enabled and a handful of command line tools only. It could be used for basic system rescue operations.

Granted, that was about 20 years ago and modern versions of the Linux kernel are a bit too big to run from a floppy disk. In recent memory, one of the smallest Linux distributions I have tried was Minimal Linux Live, which was about a 7MB download. That's just enough for the kernel, a shell, and a few userland utilities, again mostly for system rescue purposes.

There are a few other distributions which are in the same range. Tiny Core's most compact edition is about 17MB and SliTaz has an edition which is under 50MB.

These distributions are probably as small as you will be able to get, realistically, and still have an operating system which can boot on a personal computer. There are some smaller, embedded Linux distributions that are not meant for use by the general public. Linux can power all sorts of small devices and I've heard of people booting a Linux kernel on anything from home appliances to vape pens.

Whenever we talk about how small Linux can get or how few resources it can be made to consume, I think it is important to include context. Specifically, what do we want to accomplish with this miniature distribution? We can distill the Linux kernel and userland down to a few megabytes, but it won't be useful for many things. As soon as we start to add functionality, the size will need to creep upward. If we want a command line experience, we will need at least 10MB of disk space and around 25MB of RAM, if we want to add a graphical environment then the requirements go upward. Tiny Core Linux manages to provide a desktop and package manager with about 24MB of disk space and a little under 100MB of RAM. This is probably as small as we can get and provide any degree of practical personal computing.

In short, on the heavier end, big Linux distros can get by with about half the resources of Windows 11. On the lighter end, there are some Linux distributions which can run a small desktop and a few applications with about 1% of the resources Microsoft says Windows 11 requires.

* * * * *

Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.The FreeBSD project has published an update to FreeBSD's 14.x series. The new version, 14.5, provides several fixes and introduces some changes to the userland utilities. "The rc.firewall script now supports reading IP addresses or subnets from on-disk files for the firewall_allowservices and firewall_trusted list variables. Elements that look like absolute paths are read line by line, skipping comments and blank lines, and the first word on each line is treated as an address or subnet. The default history size in sh(1) has been increased from 100 to 128, complying with the POSIX.1-2024 minimum requirement. LTO-10 and LTO-10P density codes and cartridge specifications have been added to mt(1) and libmt, enabling detection and reporting of the new tape formats. The default behaviour of pwd(1) has changed from -P to -L, aligning with POSIX semantics. The ipfw(8) binary now includes a fallback mechanism to support the new kernel interface introduced in FreeBSD 15.0. When running with a 15.0+ kernel, ipfw(8) automatically invokes a bundled ipfw15 binary to load firewall rules, ensuring compatibility during upgrade procedures. The daemon(8) utility now supports the -m option to specify the output file mode, allowing non-root log collectors to access log files." Additional information can be found in the release announcement and in the release notes.

Spaced Linux 9.26

Spaced Linux 9.26 has been released. Spaced Linux is a desktop Linux distribution based on Devuan's "Unstable" branch and featuring the MATE desktop environment with the Compiz compositing window manager. "Spaced Linux 9.26 is a major production release focused on upgrade reliability, graphics-driver recovery, desktop startup resilience, signed package delivery, and substantially stronger automated release validation. System updates and upgrade reliability: reworked Spaced Update to handle complete operating system upgrades more safely and predictably; added a dedicated APT transaction guard so package changes are protected during the actual locked package-management operation rather than only during preliminary checks; improved handling of package refreshes, native package upgrades, Flatpak updates, release-marker changes, and error reporting; added explicit testing for upgrades from earlier Spaced Linux installations to reduce the chance of regressions affecting existing users; added package-payload validation to confirm that the packages delivered by the production repository match the expected release; added release-identity checks so the built ISO, installed release metadata, package repository, and release version cannot silently drift apart...." Continue to the detailed release notes for further information.

Spaced Linux 9.26 -- Running the MATE desktop

(full image size: 985kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)

Ubuntu 24.04.5

Utkarsh Gupta has announced an update to the Ubuntu 24.04 long-term support (LTS) branch of Canonical's operating system. The new update, version 24.04.5, introduces fixes and improvements: "Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS, code-named 'Noble Numbat', is here. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, together with the community and our partners, to introduce new features and fix bugs. As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided, so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS." The release announcement and release notes provide additional information for both Ubuntu and its community editions.

* * * * *

Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases- Soplos 2026.09

- Margine 20260906

- Shadowfetch 4.0.0

- openKylin 3.0-20260905

- LinuxConsole 2026-09-07

- Slimbook OS 26-r4

- Berserk Arch 2026.09.07

- 4MLinux 52.1

- Security Onion 3.3.0-20260908

- MocaccinoOS 26.09

- Q4OS 7.0-r7-testing

- StormOS 2026.09

- DESERT 5.5.2_26.04

- NawaOS 2.1.0

- Deblinux 6.2.1

- SolydXK 202609

- Vuu-do 20260908

- HAOS 18.3-rc1

- starkOS 20260909

- Pulsar 1.0

- Genuen 2026.09.10

- Xray_OS 26.02.16.01

- Manjaro 26.1.2

- GLF OS 26.09

- TUXEDO 20260910

- Linux Q83 13.16

- Ubuntu 24.04.5

- Kubuntu 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Lubuntu 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Ubuntu Kylin 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Ubuntu MATE 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Ubuntu Budgie 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Edubuntu 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Ubuntu Unity 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Xubuntu 24.04.5 (Announcement)

- Mabox 26.09

- TROMjaro 2026.09.11

- FLinux 17.1

- Netdeep 4.10358

- Exton 260912 "OpSuS"

- Debian 13.7.0

- Debian Edu 13.7.0

- KaOS 2026.09

- Ditana 0.9.4-beta

- nakeDeb 1.6-202609

- ArchBANG 130926

- LankeOS 0.20

- SkillFishOS 26.06.5

The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.

Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.

Torrent Corner statistics:

- Total torrents seeded: 3,496

- Total data uploaded: 51.0TB

- 2026-09-15: Fedora 45 Beta

- 2026-09-24: Ubuntu 26.10 Beta

- 2026-10-15: Ubuntu 26.10 (see release schedule)

- 2026-10-20: Fedora 45 (see release calendar)

You can see the results of our previous poll on Debian's vote concerning large language model use in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.

- Number of all distributions in the database: 1,239

- Number of active distributions in the database: 511

- Number of dormant distributions: 41

- Number of discontinued distributions: 685

- Number of distributions on the waiting list: 235

- Number of distributions waiting for evaluation: 199

* * * * *

This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 September 2026. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)

- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)

If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.

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"It's not as though the system being immutable is going to make the Debian base, of all things, more stable. " This!

As soon as I see "immutable", I pass it by.

2 • Poll Results (by Nantangitan on 2026-09-14 01:42:09 GMT from Australia)

Something odd appears to be happening to the poll results on this one, >2600 responses for "Under 5mb" producing a 98% share seems... not correct.

3 • Immutable (by Steve K on 2026-09-14 01:42:33 GMT from United States)

"As soon as I see "immutable", I pass it by. "

Me, too!

Always!

4 • Smallest linux. (by jay coeli on 2026-09-14 01:44:32 GMT from United States)

DSL. SliTaz. And, of course, Mitrax.

5 • @2 (by Jerry M. on 2026-09-14 01:44:53 GMT from United States)

The numbers are correct and accurate, just like the page hit rankings are accurate and correct.

6 • Shrinking Linux (by Wedge009 on 2026-09-14 01:51:49 GMT from Australia)

I remember playing around with SliTaz back in the day, as well as Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux. In all cases it was fun to see how small one could go and still have something reasonably functional, but in terms of something I could feel comfortable using day-to-day, none of them were something I ever seriously considered in that regard.

7 • How small was the smallest Linux you have used? (by Devlin7 on 2026-09-14 02:23:44 GMT from New Zealand)

Late 90s, used a linux router on a floppy

8 • Poll Results (by Much Derper on 2026-09-14 02:41:52 GMT from United States)

My earliest experiences with Linux were running Grey Cat Linux, which could be booted off something like three floppies, and used MS-DOS as a bootstrap (loadlin.exe, anyone?)

Essentially, anyone who started their Linux journey early enough that floppies were still a thing (up to mid-to-late 2000s?) probably falls under "Less than 5MB" category, as well as anyone into vintage computing.

9 • Small Linux (by Dave on 2026-09-14 02:46:07 GMT from Australia)

I belive Alpine Linux is only 5 MB, excluding the kernel

10 • Immutable (by Much Derper on 2026-09-14 02:57:31 GMT from United States)

IMHO Immutable distros are only great if you a) have extra RAM to forgo the benefits of sharing the same libraries across every process in the entire system, b) want something so brain-dead simple to upgrade it's just rebooting once, like with SteamOS.

11 • Dinky Distros (by Irving Schwartz on 2026-09-14 05:32:33 GMT from Germany)

Well.. I‘m afraid I have always worried about the really tiny Linux distros as not being capable of carrying out my various needs without a lot more downloading, so I stick with antiX, and various others from time to time on other machines for fooling around. AntiX is not huge but not dinky.

Side note/question: What does „excluding the kernel“ mean when considering the size of a distro? Why do that? Just curious. @9

12 • Smallest distro (by pndy on 2026-09-14 06:57:07 GMT from Poland)

ByzantineOS, somewhere around 2005 - it was based around Mozilla Suite before Google even was thinking about going for browser business

13 • Small linux (by Zid on 2026-09-14 07:14:50 GMT from Sweden)

Was using "FREESCO Single Floppy Router" cause my ADSL ISP was using PPPoE and provided a Windows client, but I wanted to run a little LAN

https://www.freesco.org/

It was i fact a single floppy, but could be installed to HD.

Was using a 486dx2-66 MHz with two 3COM nics, and a 40 MB HD.

I even ran the web and ftp server plugins on it.

14 • Smallest distro (by Rene on 2026-09-14 08:11:11 GMT from The Netherlands)

Can not quiet remember the name of the distro.

It was 256 mb with a full desktop.

Currently i have Arch in Virtualbox wich takes only 5,1 gb of disk space and i only use Pekwm,no desktop.

Further it has anything i need.(Browser,e-mail,pictureviewer,terminalemulator,filemanager,mediaplayer,text,pdf and a dash with a clock)

15 • OpenWRT, one of the smallest generally available (by We all float down on 2026-09-14 09:31:38 GMT from The Netherlands)

On MIPS. Tried it on i386 as well. Had to install lots of tiny packages for USB and the kernel was _still_ missing the HP USB mouse patch. Didn't try installing the petabyte ball and toolchain. The End.

16 • Smolinux (by Klaas on 2026-09-14 09:51:52 GMT from The Netherlands)

The smallest Linux distro I've ever run is probably FatDog64. Not that small. Fatter than Puppy, at any rate. But a lot closer to small than to big.

@5 True. In all these years of MX supposedly dominating DistroWatch, I have yet to meet anyone who runs it unironically. Much like Hannah Montana Linux.

17 • small distros (by MikeOh Shark on 2026-09-14 10:18:08 GMT from United States)

I tried all of the small distros that Jesse mentioned and I am sure that I became aware of them from reading Distrowatch.

The small distros really became useful for me when Puppy Linux and Slax fit on the small 3" CDRs. I used Puppy and a personally remastered version of Slax on small CDRs that fit in my shirt pocket so I had useful tools to fix or backup Windows PCs that had software issues such as viruses. BartPE allowed me to use Windows on a small CDR as well.

18 • Excluding kernel (by Jesse on 2026-09-14 10:22:12 GMT from Canada)

@11: Alpine is often run in containers where you only need userland files. The container shares a kernel with the host OS.

19 • (by on 2026-09-14 03:10:09 GMT from United States)

I always had issues with Immutable distros in managing fonts and icons. Bash scripts often didn't work either without workarounds. I probably could have persevered but I too realized the benefits of immutability didn't match me personally.

20 • Freesco (by Mr B on 2026-09-14 10:31:35 GMT from United Kingdom)

@13

I used Freesco too and I thought it was marvellous back in the days of ADSL. I swear it made my web browsing faster than my normal ISP modem setup. Happy days!

Later, I used Damn Small Linux a bit and Puppy too. I am intrigued by Alpine but I can't seem to get my head around it. Oh well.

21 • Linux on less than 100 M (by eb on 2026-09-14 08:10:42 GMT from France)

20 years ago at my office, I added to each of my 4 thin clients a small hard disk, for automatically backing-up the important data of my server (running on Suse) ; and on a small separate partition (150 or 200 M), I installed the core of Slackware 10.1 ('a' folder) plus midnight-commander, and may be rsync. Theese installations filled 90 M, were bootable from Lilo on small floppy, and worked perfectly.

22 • Small and basic OSes (by The Mekon on 2026-09-14 10:55:13 GMT from United Kingdom)

In the 'good old days' there were quite a few small options, Puppy probably being 'best'/most reliable. It was (and still is) being expanded, improved by followers, albeit under different badges. Meanwhile Barry Kauler, originator of Puppy, now offers us EASY running off a~10Gb (possibly smaller depending on usage) go-anywhere stick.This is a great option for portability, testing, repairing '-doze' and most other bent hard/software. Wouldn't be without it - and upgradalbe too.

23 • Ubuntu requirement (by Hyus on 2026-09-14 11:15:33 GMT from France)

Ubuntu (Desktop) requires a 2 GHz dual-core processor, 6 GB RAM and 25 GB of disk space "for a comfortable experience" (not a sluggish desktop).

Xubuntu, using the same base, only requires 64 bit AMD/Intel processor, 1 GB RAM and 8.6 GB of disk space (and recommend 1.5Ghz Dual Core, 2 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk space).

Now sure, you certainly can install on even lower spec without any failure during the installation (when W11 won't let you run the installer if you don't have the requirements or the good exact CPU model) but the overall experience will suffer (like browsers quitting when five tabs are opened), when W11 would disable arbitrary functionalities (like changing the background image, like it would in some W7 versions) to try to save some resources.

At the end of the day, Linux may be lighter than Windows (which is known to be more bloated, depending of the services actually running) but most softwares behave the same resources-wise.

24 • That Poll on ISO sizes (by Jupiter on 2026-09-14 13:44:32 GMT from United States)

You know, more than 6000 people all saying they've booted an ISO image less than 5MB seems a little... wrong? Personally I think the smallest ISO image I've ever actually booted is probably the standard Debian Image, which itself is around 750MB. Maybe if the comments reflected the poll results more I might consider it legit, but as of right now I do not.

PS: At least the Haiku poll (which its results seemed a tad odd) had the logical explanation that their users came on DW just to vote on that Haiku poll when they normally don't. Last week's poll really doesn't line up with this weeks in terms of numbers either.

I suspect botting or someone really trying to mess with it.

25 • RequirKements... (by PCfire on 2026-09-14 13:59:45 GMT from Canada)

An 'old PC' is not the same as an old PC (as well as 'new'), and an old PC can be more powerful than the new one. Same so, 'high RAM usage' isn't the same as high RAM usage. The naked numbers don't tell much, or even nothing at all, to someone who doesn't understand more than 'higher number'/'lower number'. And then we get the applications...

If you have a 'snail CPU' and 1 ~ 2 GB RAM, then there's little point to 'revive' it with Linux, because, yes, you can install the OS, but there's still no use for a PC that can't manage a dozen of tabs in a web browser. Applications don't care of religion.

If you have a powerful but old PC, there's again no point in installing Linux, as it will run worse and make more issues than if you install Windows 11. It might be officially unsupported by MS, but it's also officially unsupported if you install Linux.

26 • @Jupiter - Smallest ISO image (by PCfire on 2026-09-14 14:06:08 GMT from Canada)

Look at Tiny Core, as a fully functional, tiny distro. But there are also some others, like Porteus & Porteux, much bigger than Tiny Core, but much smaller than 750 MB -- including the complete Gnome or KDE Plasma GUI.

27 • Small Linux distros and Windows vs. Linux resource requirements (by Joe on 2026-09-14 15:02:09 GMT from United States)

@14 Are you thinking of Slax? That was/is a very cool project indeed.

Regarding Linux vs. Windows resource usage, Windows RAM requirements are usually overstated, and Linux requirements are usually understated. For work I run a de-bloated Windows 11 installation in a VM with only 2GB of RAM allotted to it, and it runs just fine for what I need. Nowadays most modern Linux systems would be swapping and freezing like crazy just to boot to a desktop with so little RAM available. (I also find it strange that Linux's handling of low memory situations is still so embarrassingly bad, even to the point that userspace hacks like systemd-oomd and earlyoom are often used to work around those situations that should really be handled by the kernel.)

As for Windows disk space requirements and overall bloat and corporate/AI/marketing/antivirus nonsense, yeah, there's no excuse for it there. ;-) It can be de-bloated as I mentioned, but it takes a lot of work that shouldn't be necessary.

28 • small distros and mx (by a Drangleic hobbit on 2026-09-14 15:13:20 GMT from Chile)

Small distros were a lot more important when specs and storage were more of a hurdle that they are today. I remember fondly both puppy linux and lubuntu 14.04 with lxde, but those are on the fatter side of light. I also remember running some obscure distro with joe's window manager only but my memory ain't what it used to.

@16 I do use mx linux unironically. It's the "I want devuan/debian but can't be arsed with setting it up post install". Same thing with peppermint which I also enjoy using. The default settings/looks just work for me. Now, a similar distro but with a dedicated lxqt (default lxqt is too tedious to tinker with and lubuntu is regretfully ubuntu) would be my white whale.

29 • Booting smol (by Kingneutron on 2026-09-14 15:36:19 GMT from United States)

@24, a LOT of us remember TomsRtBt. Granted it fell out of style when 64-bit became common and the floppy drive went the way of the dodo, but back in the day it was useful.

30 • @27 (Joe) (by PCfire on 2026-09-14 15:40:04 GMT from Canada)

"Bloatware" and "de-bloated" are relative terms. Most people I know would agree that average Linux distributions have much more bloatware on a fresh install than Windows. Office? Printer support? Nobody is printing anymore, since years, except companies. One letter every couple of years, one can easily write in some online "office". I wouldn't want to use something that comes without AI, or I'd have to install it myself. That takes a lot of work...

31 • ISO size (by Jesse on 2026-09-14 16:23:01 GMT from Canada)

@24: "You know, more than 6000 people all saying they've booted an ISO image less than 5MB seems a little... wrong? Personally I think the smallest ISO image I've ever actually booted is probably the standard Debian Image, which itself is around 750MB."

Maybe you haven't been in the community very long? A lot of our readers are probably people that have been running Linux for over a decade. Prior to around 2012 it was common for ISO images to be under 700MB (on the heavy end of the spectrum). If you were downloading a lightweight distro it would be under 100MB.

Or maybe you've just never used a container? Most technical folks do use containers, particularly developers and system admins. One of the most common distributions for containers is Alpine Linux and its download size for containers and chroot environments is 3MB. That's well under the 5MB cutoff.

Basically anyone who has used a container in the Linux community would probably answer the poll with "under 5MB". So having the majority of our readers, who lean toward the technical side, answer "under 5MB" makes perfect sense.

32 • Immutables and Image sizes (by JKL on 2026-09-14 16:45:46 GMT from United States)

Remember those mini.iso's that Ubuntu used to have? I used to boot those a lot to install them. I do not know if you would count them as "images" as they were netboot images, but they were tiny though!

As for immutable systems, I think they are neat! I like using Fedora atomic and Universal Blue images and even built some custom images with my customizations. Nice thing about Fedora Atomic in particular is that it uses bootc which means that you can boot standard container defined in container files (e.g. Docker containers). Another nice thing is that when updating the system, everything is atomic, which means that there isn't a botched update. If there is a bad update, you can easily roll back. If your system gets borked, you can redeploy the image onto your system. Good for repairing and such. If you get sick of your desktop environment, you can rebase to a new base image with a different desktop. Simple to do. On traditional systems, I only know how to do that properly on Arch without breaking everything.

At the same time, immutable image systems do add to the complexity of a system, and a good share of folks probably would rather have full reign on their system than fiddle with layers or create custom images. It's their right of choice, after all! On some of my machines, a traditional system is better for the workflow I am using.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree with VanillaOS's complexity. I keep having issues with getting it working right with my specific setup that I have no problem with on Fedora Atomic.

33 • @30 "Bloat" (by Mr. Peabody on 2026-09-14 17:09:26 GMT from United States)

See, we're all different. I routinely print at home (it's easier for me to read and deal with, 'cause OLD), as well as use spreadsheets and word processor there. And I'm still stuck on Windows simply because I can't get Quicken 13 to absolutely reliably run under Wine or other (I'm not giving up 34 years of my financial data, nor recreating it in another application). Never intend to use any online office, and refuse to deal with links to Google docs, et al. And AI is a valuable tool, but only when I need to chat with my AI girlfriends. :-)

34 • Small distributions (by Bob McConnell on 2026-09-14 18:18:42 GMT from United States)

In spring of 1992, I downloaded Soft Landing Systems Linux release 1.02. It contained Kernel version 0.98PL12. The core system and utilities fit on a single 5" floppy (1.44MB) with the sources on a second diskette. I installed it on an Everex Step386, replacing the Minix system I had been playing with. Unfortunately, SLS folded their tent later that same year. The next summer I replaced it with Slackware and have been using that almost exclusively ever since. I last saw those diskettes while packing to move in late 2024. If I still have them, they are likely stored in one of the boxes I have not yet unpacked.

35 • smoler than smol (by qiki on 2026-09-14 18:29:46 GMT from Canada)

I've run QNX on an 1.44MB floppy as a curiosity, but the smallest Linux I've played with is Tiny Core (<10MB at the time) and I've run SliTaz (~50MB) as a daily driver some time ago. The tiny stuff was fun and I still prefer as minimal a distro as I can put together.

36 • Smallest distro (by Tony Agudo on 2026-09-14 19:23:55 GMT from United States)

Look up Floppinux. It runs a brutally cut down fairly recent Linux kernel with an equally stripped Busybox that fits on a 1.44MB floppy with just over 200KB to spare. It's an educational distro rather than a daily driver.

37 • Printing and stuff (by Friar Tux on 2026-09-15 00:08:58 GMT from Canada)

@33 I agree. I also still print stuff. I also don't use, or have use for, those big complicated office suites. Most documents I've ever had to send and receive were in the PDF format. I use a smallish PIM/note taking app that exports in PDF (Cherrytree by Giuseppe Penone). I also don't care about how small a distro I can use. My laptop has 500 GB of memory, and 4 GB of RAM (plus a variable swap file). While a tiny distro may be nice for toying around with, in this day and age, I prefer something substantial in a distro. If that means a "fatter" distro, so be it.

This does spark a question, though. What is the "fattest" sensible distro available? By sensible, I mean that it's not fat because the ISO contains all the available DEs, or every possible WM. Just that the distro has all the checks and balances to run no matter the situation. That one I would love to test. Say... an ISO of 5 GB or more, perhaps.

38 • Influx of Arch's Bug Reports (by RoestVrijStaal on 2026-09-15 00:41:58 GMT from The Netherlands)

Another measure to reduce the amount of bug reports would be 10-year-lasting bans on people using AI or not reading the HOWTO of posting bug reports.

39 • @28 • small distros and mx (LXQT) (by El Pingo on 2026-09-15 02:47:35 GMT from United States)

@28, Ahoy, Captain Ahab! You might want to try Senpai Linux. It's an MX 25.2 respin with LXQT.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/senpai-respin-mx-lxqt/

May be a black whale painted white, but it looks good.

40 • Small distros (by Tom on 2026-09-15 16:19:54 GMT from Poland)

GeeXboX (2003 year)

41 • Immutable RAM hog (by Jamal Johnson on 2026-09-15 21:17:20 GMT from Australia)

VanillaOS

Nice idea, but, the execution is not thought out well.

Immutable OS's already use more RAM than normal. Then Vanilla uses of Gnome on top of that, and what you end up with is an RAM hog. :-(

These days when there is a RAM shortage (any RAM is expensive) why is Vanilla using Gnome of all things? Would it not make more sense to at the very least use KDE, but better would be XFCE or LXQT?

So many people really have an intense adverse reaction to all things Gnome, for obvious reasons; bad UI design, non-removable packages, and high RAM usage being probably the primary ones.

So does it make sense to use Gnome for immutable OS's? I don't think so.

I would consider an immutable but it can't be running Gnome. Give me a lean immutable Linux OS for my old crusty computer with 8GB of DDR3.

42 • Requirements (by Xander on 2026-09-16 00:06:21 GMT from United States)

I'm a little puzzled by a comment by @25 where they say it's not realistic to try to run Linux on an powerful but old computer. Assuming that I read it right. Really? Next to me is my backup laptop, an old Dell with an original I7 with 10GB of RAM that is running Mint 22.1 with Xfce. I still use it on a regular basis with very few problems. As someone who ran Winblows 11 on another laptop for a few years, it's going to be a tough sell with me that I'd be better off running W11 on the Dell rather than Linux. The W7 that came with the Dell was a dream OS compared to W11. And I still occasionally run Puppy on a stick on the Dell. I can't remember which was the first Puppy I used, but I know I ran 3 at one time. I was surprised someone mentioned QNX in the comments. I remember trying that. And BeOS, Syllable, various BASICs, various pre-Mac OSes including the Apple /// SOS, and who knows what else. I'm not a geek, I just like to tinker. Best wishes to all.

43 • "Requirements" vs. Requirements (by Maud on 2026-09-16 13:42:01 GMT from The Netherlands)

@42: That's because you lack critical thinking skills, general knowledge, and an understanding of operating systems. Not to mention the fact that you belong to the '1% of very special sort of people'.

The average user (99 %) expects things to 'just work', usually doesn't even know what OS it is running, but cares for the applications (and knows why those and not some others!), and does not want to fiddle.

Now, let's say, we have an Intel i7-860 (12 GB RAM) and Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, and we need a new OS for it. Windows 11 is 'unsupported', but, you take Rufus, copy Win11 on the USB stick and install it, and you are ready to go -- MS Office runs, Adobe Suite runs, and Steam and NON-Steam games 'just run'.

And then we try installing Linux... Bazzite won't run at all, because MB has no UEFI. Something 'rolling' we don't want, as it regularly falls apart. Something 'semi-rolling' (Fedora) will replace your perfectly working drivers on the next upgrade (43 --> 44), without asking, and your system will fall apart. Yes, it's fixable -- by fiddling.

Something 'stable', like Ubuntu LTS? Well, application bugs are also 'stable', and you are free to keep them for years. Not to mention, you must also be scared each time there is some new update, and especially upgrade -- just go and read Zorin forums.

And now, the simple fact: Nothing is ever 'just working' in Linux -- it's always 'fight to get it work', and 'fight to keep it work', and all that for a half-functioning OS.

Applications you want don't run. Games you want to play don't run, and if, again with '1001 Proton versions' fiddling, and often without cut-scene videos in games, because 'codecs'...

Linux is the exact opposite of freedom, and 'free' you pay with your 'life time'. Yes, you'd be better -- much better -- with Windows, except in case that 'playing with your OS' is your main goal.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. (Mark Twain)

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