Minimal Linux distribution with large repository?

Question

I have read Which minimal but extendable Linux distribution to choose but I'm using the word minimal in a slightly different sense: processes run at startup, not memory/disk space taken by the distribution itself.

I'm in the process of installing Fedora 24. After I install and reboot, there are close to 100 processes running, not including the bracketed process like '[kworker/6:1]' which I assume are magic and don't count.

Keep in mind, these are the processes running BEFORE I've installed anything using dnf or before I've made any changes to the system. Once I start adding packages and configuring the system, it gets worse.

I've tried to kill/stop/disable as many services as possible (see https://github.com/barrycarter/bcapps/blob/master/FEDORA), but I sense I'm on entirely the wrong track.

What minimal Linux distribution installs with the fewest processes running but still has a large dnf/yum/apt repository so I can install pretty much anything I want. In Fedora 24, for example, I do this (you do need to install a couple of repos to get this working):

sudo dnf -y install --allowerasing --best ImageMagick OpenThreads 
PySolFC SDL-devel alpine aspell audacity bind c++-gtk-utils-gtk2-devel 
community-mysql community-mysql-server dosbox dosemu elinks emacs 
enscript esniper expect feh ffmpeg ftp fuse-encfs fvwm gd-devel 
getmail glade glade-devel gnumeric gnuplot gpm graphviz 
gtk+extra-devel gtk2-devel gtk3-devel html2ps lynx mencoder parallel 
mplayer mrtg nagios-plugins nano ncftp openrdate perl-CPAN php-mysqlnd 
pidgin postgresql postgresql-server qgis qhull rdesktop recoll rsyslog 
rxvt samba screen snownews stella stellarium tcsh tigervnc tk unrtf 
util-linux-user vice vlc xdotool xemacs xemacs-packages-extra-el 
xinetd xorg-x11-apps xpdf xsane xteddy xterm xv yum yum-utils 
zlib-devel zlib-static mod_ldap tor tor-arm-gui tor-arm onionshare 
privoxy recordmydesktop tmpwatch esmtp-local-delivery sendmail 
sendmail-cf fuse-sshfs fuse-zip fuse-encfs curlftpfs bindfs xcalc 
libpuzzle libpuzzle-devel pyephem python2-astropy python3-astropy erfa 
libnova ast R sagemath-notebook nmap p7zip "perl-Digest-*" 
"perl-Date-*" "perl-DateTime-*" "perl-Text-*" "perl-MIME-*" 
"perl-Math-*" "perl-Data-*" "perl-JSON-*" "perl-Algorithm-*" 
"perl-DBI-*" "perl-DB_File" "perl-File-*" "perl-Net-*" "perl-Number-*" 
"perl-Getopt-*" "perl-GD" "perl-HTML-*" "perl-HTTP-*" "perl-IO-*" 
lucene "perl-LWP-*" "perl-Inline" "perl-Inline-*" perl-OpenGL 
perl-utf8-all "perl-B-*" "perl-IPC-*" perl-Imager "perl-Flickr-*" 
ntpdate 

(note that the above is all one line, I just added newlines to make it more readable).

and that's just for starters. With the possible exception of the Perl modules (which I believe should be handled by cpan), I want a distro whose repo has at least the above, and hopefully much more.

I'm currently using Fedora Core 11, so I prefer commands like yum and rpm, but am willing to switch if needed.

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for a command-line-only system. I do want to run X11 and fvwm2, but not the jillions of things Fedora 24 runs by default (I can provide a list on request).

I considered installing Fedora Cloud (https://getfedora.org/en/atomic/), but it appears to be specific to cloud environments and I wasn't sure if it was "real" Fedora that would work with Fedora 24 and compatible repositories.

Answer 1

I think you're failing to distinguish between a base install and a desktop install of a Linux distribution.

I'm not very familiar with Fedora, but, if I want a minimal Ubuntu installation, I use the debootstrap tool to install only "base" packages by default (basically, this includes whatever you need to run the package manager itself). Then I can add whatever additional packages I want with apt-get.

By default, it won't even be bootable unless you install a package that provides linux, such as linux-image-generic. I'd imagine Fedora has a way to start with a base install as well.