Minibase, super-tiny static system

February 04, 2019 — BarryK

Thanks to sc0ttman on the Puppy Forum who discovered this, see post:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=115255

Here is the Minibase project page:

I compiled like this:

# ./configure
# make
# make install

...and it compiled in, well, it seemed like a few seconds!

Installation is into folder 'out'. The utilities are statically-linked ...and wow, they are small!

Minibase is a complete Linux system, and can be used with Buildroot to compile an X desktop. I downloaded a ready-made image from here:

https://github.com/arsv/minibase-br/

...file 'sys-1-plain.tar.xz' is only 17.7MB, what kind of desktop can that possibly be?

I expanded 'sys-1-plain.tar.gz' and inside is 'whole.img' which I wrote to a USB stick. It actually booted to a desktop, on my HP midi-tower PC, and I couldn't believe how fast -- under 5 seconds.

Nothing much on the desktop, just Fluxbox and urxvt. But hey, this is brilliant.

Xorg, fluxbox, urxvt etc., were compiled in Buildroot, using musl, and it should be possible to add more apps, such as a browser.

I have a particular fascination for minimalist systems like this. Also, I am interested in some of the utilities, for possible use in Easy.

Tags: linux