Minimax 20060326 Beta

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.
Main features:
- 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