How about Tiny Core Linux [0, 1]? On a typical install it boots to RAM, thus runs really fast, making it perfect for low-end/ancient hardware. One of the main f

How about Tiny Core Linux [0, 1]? On a typical install it boots to RAM, thus runs really fast, making it perfect for low-end/ancient hardware. One of the main flavors is a 16 MB FLTK/FLWM desktop -- Dillo [2] for web browsing, etc. The TTY-only base version should be around 11 MB. There's also a version based on Debian, but I haven't used it thus far. TC is a highly modular distro, and really comfy to hand-tailor to one's needs (e.g. for building a single-application system): all booted packages are listed in a single config file, excluded files or processes in another, etc. This, combined with a RAM-booted system, means that it's really easy to return to a pristine system when you mess something up. As for booting, it's not lightning fast (not quite like FreeDOS). But this depends on the amount of packages you want to load on startup, how much X stuff you have, whether the /home partition is also loaded to RAM or kept on the disk, etc. My favorite feature with regard to the RAM booting is that this gives me a dead silent system, at least on less complicated setups. I've been a more or less daily TC user for 6-7 years, since version 6.4. I can confirm that I used it in 2017-2018 on a Thinkpad T42 to produce lengthy radio programs for my country's Public Broadcasting with Non DAW. Setting up sound and wifi may require fiddling at times, but I've always succeeded thus far on our old Dells and Thinkpads. For a really minimal system, though, I think TC is really solid. The software repos are also not bad, highly encouraging user contributions. Read the Corebook (2013) [3] for a detailed overview of the system. What's also important is that TC is in active development, current version 12.0 is from February 2021. The message board is lively and helpful. 0: http://tinycorelinux.net/ http://tinycorelinux.net/ 1: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=tinycore https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=tinycore 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo 3: http://tinycorelinux.net/corebook.pdf http://tinycorelinux.net/corebook.pdf