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I only need to run text-based applications on my server. think LAMP + ssh. It seems unnecessary to install entire distributions, like ubuntu, just to fire up apache and serve up my one web app. instead, it would be nice to have a more lightweight distro that runs easily in a container (lxc docker) as well as on my old hardware as well as a virtual machine as well as ...

does this kind of "light text-based server distro" exist anywhere?

ivo Welch
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Yes. CoreOS is what you're looking for. It's a new-ish linux distro, targeted at providing a bare minimum OS for docker deployments.

Alternatively, just install Debian or even Ubuntu's Server distribution. Either are quite lightweight.

EEAA
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  • unfortunately, CoreOS does not seem to have a bare-metal version. it relies on vagrant, which in turn seems to rely on an installed OS. – ivo Welch Apr 02 '14 at 18:03
  • @ivoWelch - Incorrect. You missed the [Installing to Disk](https://coreos.com/docs/running-coreos/bare-metal/installing-to-disk/) section. – EEAA Apr 02 '14 at 20:35
  • thx for pointing this out. you are correct. the quickstart guide that the site pointed me to had not even mentioned it. but I see it now elsewhere. installing-to-disk still seems a little raw. let's say I have a completely fresh server. I need a USB stick or ISO file to boot from (minor), and this needs to set up grub[2]. I only see partition setup instructions. or did I miss this, too? – ivo Welch Apr 03 '14 at 04:30