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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Smallest Security/Privacy Focused Distro Help? (self.linux)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by ErrantRoleplayer to c/[email protected]

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I've been doing some scouring and my search results are coming back confusing. Usually either incomplete information, or some kind of sales spam, so I'm reaching out in the hopes of recommendations for actual linux users and fans. I am looking for a very small, tiny even, security/privacy focused distro. I don't mind doing some work to set it up (though LFS may kill me!)

Here is what I have.

RAM: 2GB (yep. Seriously. None-upgradable).
HDD: 20GB (say 19GB)
Processor: Intel Celeron N3350 (2334Mhz average)
GPU (hah): Intel HD Graphics 500 (Integrated)

Wishlist

Graphical user interface (I appreciate it's going to be very basic)
Arch based (I love the AUR and pacman)
Base runs on less than 512MB of RAM, Arch Linux is a minimum of 512MB.

The software I plan to run on said device, so to give some kind of guidance of how much RAM we're working with.

Tor Expert and Tor Browser bundles or Mull.
Virtual machine (of some kind) with Whonix
MariaDB
RClone
VLC/Smplayer (which ever is smaller)
VPN client
Rustdesk (I can't find anything smaller than actually works)
ZSnes
SimpleX
Deluge (DelugeD with thin-client)
LibreOffice (until I can find a lighter alternative, but I need the BASIC capabilities).

Solution

https://lemmy.world/comment/10289862

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Use Arch as the Linux distro. Take advantage of its custom install to reduce the initial footprint.
Use a lightweight desktop environment. An extreme example would be starting up OpenBox from startx but there are some others like LxQt that might work.
AbiWord/Gnumeric are still alive and you can use them instead of LibreOffice.
You can use Mplayer from CLI as video player.
Use Transmission or rtorrent instead of Deluge, they take up much less RAM.
You can use X2Go instead of RustDesk, it forwards X over SSH; but it doesn't have NAT traversal. Or you can use Tailscale for NAT traversal, which takes care of encryption too, and then you can use plain VNC for desktop viewing.
Some of the stuff you listed are notorious RAM hogs, like VM, most relational databases, browsers. Good luck with that.

[–] ErrantRoleplayer 1 points 6 months ago

Arch linux is too big even as base. I'm currently using 64-bit AntiX which runs (base) half of what Arch-Linux does according to it's own guide. It's using IceWM (which is its heaviest DE). It took a while to investigate believe me, it's also Debian so focuses more on security than Arch does (due in part to Arch's bleeding edge status new vulnerabilities are being added all the time, they're being fixed of course, it's just a natural consequence of their methodology).

I don't believe AbiWord or Gnumeric have BASIC capabilities?

Deluge takes up a tiny amount of ram, I'd recommend investigating the thin client mode. It's smaller than Transmission for me. The non-daemonized client has a memory leak.

Thanks for the tip about X2Go. I'll take a look.