frugal install in linux

[lazy_lain]

so i searched about this subject who i interested with it several times

and not get any clearly answer

but the targed distro is the distros who ran from ram (antix, mx linux, puppyos..)

so in the last as a debian user can i install them with this method without taking full partition (like dual booting mxlinux with debian, just edit the grub file like they said)

 

[MikeRocor]

I've had a hard time really nailing down a definition of "frugal" install. Here's what it looks like in the Tiny Core world, which is what I'm most familiar with:

The system boots from just two files (not counting the boot loader): the kernel and the initrd file. There are additional files, of course, but they are external to the base OS and all live within a single directory known as the "tce" directory because it contains the applications which are called Tiny Core "extensions" (hence "tce" directory name.

The entirety of the standard Linux file system tree exists in RAM (a minimal filesystem in the initrd. The persistent storage of the boot device contains no /home, nor /usr - none of that stuff. Anything that you explicitly want to save (files in ~/ or wherever) needs to be "backed up" to persistent storage (there's a tool that creates a .tgz file in the tce directory and a pair of include/exclude lists for that) before rebooting. Anything not so backed up is just gone after a reboot, which makes for a really nice clean system, but battery backed power is a must.

So, in this context, "frugal" means it leaves the rest of you boot media (disk, ssd, USB stick, whatever) alone. You can have many such frugal installations on one disk and they don't interfere with each other at all. They also don't share data amongst themselves which, for my use cases, is a good thing.

I don't know if it's part of the definition of "frugal" but, in the case of Tiny Core, the installation is completely portable. The system figures out at boot time what sort of hardware it is running on and just makes it work - though you might have to add, for instance, software specific to your graphics subsystem or your wifi device (which makes it tricky if you don't have wired internet capability - hence the CorePlus ISO, which includes a bunch of wifi-related stuff).

I tried a distro once (I don't remember which one) that claimed to do a "frugal install" but still wanted to take over my boot device. That's what makes me unsure of the general definition of "frugal".

 

[osprey]

so i searched about this subject who i interested with it several times

and not get any clearly answer

but the targed distro is the distros who ran from ram (antix, mx linux, puppyos..)

so in the last as a debian user can i install them with this method without taking full partition (like dual booting mxlinux with debian, just edit the grub file like they said)

Frugal installations are similar or even perhaps the same I guess to minimal installations.
It's not quite clear to me what you are after, so I'll make a few general observations which may be of interest bouncing off your text.

Distros that run from RAM can often be installed, but when installed, these installations will always take up partition space on a drive, that is like a hard disk or SSD. The live disks issued by various distros like debian, fedora, antix, mint, mx etc. can be booted up into RAM, and then installed at the discretion of the user. When installed, it's to partitions on a drive, so they take up disk space.

For grub to boot a distro that is not on the drive, it can be configured to boot a live disk that has been plugged into a usb socket. In that way, the live distro could be called by grub, instead of using the perhaps more common method to boot the usb through bringing up the boot menu of the machine and selecting the live disk from that menu. One disadvantage of configuring grub in this way is simply the unnecessary configuration effort in the face of the availability of boot menus on modern machines. On older machines, one could configure the boot order in the BIOS to select a usb to boot first, so either new or old machines, it's unnecessary to bother with configuring grub for this purpose.

If all one want's is a frugal or minimal installation of debian, a well-tried and proven method is to install debian from the netinstall image, but de-select all the desktops and superfluous packages. This will leave a system that boots to a text prompt, after which the user can install just what they want and keep the system as small as they like, within the limits of what debian provides. The last time I did this with current debian stable the disk size taken up was about 800MB. One gets a bootable installation with networking and basic system tools.

There is a thread on the size of distros which may be of interest here: https://www.linux.org/threads/for-the-fun-of-it-how-big-is-your-distro-installation.57996.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Is it just me.....or is anyone else having difficulty in understanding the OP?

Either English is not their first language, or - like some of my countrymen - they 'murder' their own language on a daily basis. OR they're dyslexic (and may not even know it).

(The jury's still out on point #3. I'm familiar with dyslexia - my eldest nephew was diagnosed years ago, although it doesn't stop him from leading a normal life - but there's multiple 'degrees' of dyslexia. And they're not easy to 'nail down', even for the specialists...)


Mike.

 

[MikeRocor]

Is it just me.....or is anyone else having difficulty in understanding the OP?

Either English is not their first language, or - like some of my countrymen - they 'murder' their own language on a daily basis. OR they're dyslexic (and may not even know it).

(The jury's still out on point #3. I'm familiar with dyslexia - my eldest nephew was diagnosed years ago, although it doesn't stop him from leading a normal life - but there's multiple 'degrees' of dyslexia. And they're not easy to 'nail down', even for the specialists...)


Mike.

Lessdyxia is a possibility, but I suspect it's the "English not first language one".

 

[MikeWalsh]

@MikeRocor :-

I don't know if it's part of the definition of "frugal" but, in the case of Tiny Core, the installation is completely portable.

Mm-hm. TBH, I think the two terms are synonymous, Mike. Certainly, it applies to Knoppix - the very first of the 'breed' to successfully employ all said principles - and you can definitely class Porteus, Slax & of course, Puppy as all being under the same umbrella.

One of our senior Puppy devs has - by dint of writing his very own unique build-script, and combining it with a totally new & very specific initrd - developed a method for turning literally ANY mainstream distro into a portable, 'frugal' install.....which, like you say about Tiny Core, all run entirely in RAM.

Puppy was always intended to run exclusively from a flash drive OR optical drive.....and even now, still supports the ability to run from a DVD, writing its 'save-sessions' BACK to the same, 'open-burned' optical disc. Yes, I know it's slow, old-fashioned and just plain 'awkward' by today's standards, yet I don't know of any other Linux distro, anywhere, that permits this... and it WILL provide a 'workable' method for running Puppy, even on ancient hardware.


T'other Mike.

 

[lazy_lain]

who they said my english is weak (i dont matter btw)
that is bcs of im tired from search and hated it
its not popular subject so i tried and hated it, so i shorted it, and thats what is happened
mybe i will delete it

Frugal installations are similar or even perhaps the same I guess to minimal installations.
It's not quite clear to me what you are after, so I'll make a few general observations which may be of interest bouncing off your text.

thx for ur answer btw
-
im just mention this subject bcs oh this thread from mint forum

thats how i know about frugal subject

also i found this funny post from reddit who they toasted him

edit 4/4/2026: i try this method

the install its fast, i will not explained it, but if you need to test it test it

the distro after i chose runit system is so smother and faster

but the problem is the distro is look like broken, many of pakages is broken and you cant upgrade it, look like you're use live iso without usb

i didnt try to solve it so this is not the os problem

i will break up and try to split the free storage

this case is closed, thx