Re: [tlug] Good binary distribution

[Matt Doughty <wyndigo@example.com>]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 01:12:00PM +0000, Josh Glover wrote:
> 
> Not to be crufty (OK, to be crufty), but 400M seems pretty hefty to me for a
> dedicated firewall. Seems to me that I can get Gentoo installed with just the
> kernel, base system, OpenSSH, and iptables in 250M or so. Rip out the compiler,
> Perl, and Python when I am done, and that would probably go down to 200M or so.
> And I bet that NetBSD would be even smaller, if I installed just the kernel,
> base system, and system.

Just a run down.
bare bones NetBSD: 	56M (base, kernel, and etc)
+docs: 					86M (+man)
+text utils (groff): 89M (+text)
+misc (more docs):   97M (+misc)
+dev tools:				151M (+comp)

Now bare bones is enough for a firewall. If all you are going to do is run
a firewall I would advise that. What I find more interesting is you can have
a fully functional system without dev tools in 97M, and a with dev tools
at 151M.  This isn't a gloating mine is smaller than yours. It is to illustrate
exactly how bloated a lot of distos really are.  Its sad when you think you
have a pruned down install at 400MB. 

I really love how tight most of the BSDs are, and I really avoid linux on servers
these days. I know it is in vogue to laugh at the BSD mentality of tightly 
coupling kernel and userland, but it really does result in a well ordered 
consistent system. I can get on just about any *BSD system, and I know what
I will find. I know I can count of certain things to be there, and I can
be reasonably sure there isn't going to be a lot of cruft.

Oh and Josh. You are welcome as the third brother. ;)

--Matt