good light yet developer friendly distro?

[xav1r]

As the title says, Im looking for a good linux distro that is both light and portable, like by the means of running from a liveCD with the option of installing it to a HD, but feature-full enough for development. The reason why i dont want to go for the big popular distros like ubuntu or opensuse, etc, is that theyre too heavy, need lots of HD, and I need something i can carry around in a USB flash drive. Yet, i want a distro that has full gcc/g++ framework to compile my own executables. I tried a few, and so far i came up with several that were more or less good at that. Slax, which is slackware-based, runs with KDE, Antix, mepis based, uses fluxbox, and Wolvix, based in Slackware too runs Gnome. All 3 of these have their pros and cons.

So anyone would care to suggest a good distro with traits like those?

thanks.

[deanjo]

As the title says, Im looking for a good linux distro that is both light and portable, like by the means of running from a liveCD with the option of installing it to a HD, but feature-full enough for development. The reason why i dont want to go for the big popular distros like ubuntu or opensuse, etc, is that theyre too heavy, need lots of HD, and I need something i can carry around in a USB flash drive. Yet, i want a distro that has full gcc/g++ framework to compile my own executables. I tried a few, and so far i came up with several that were more or less good at that. Slax, which is slackware-based, runs with KDE, Antix, mepis based, uses fluxbox, and Wolvix, based in Slackware too runs Gnome. All 3 of these have their pros and cons.

So anyone would care to suggest a good distro with traits like those?

thanks.

To tell you the truth I just spin off a usb image for a thumb drive off of opensuse using it's product creator module. ~1.5 gig on the thumbdrive leaving me with 2.5 gig on a 4 Gig key. If needed to install it can be done right from the USB key.

[xav1r]

To tell you the truth I just spin off a usb image for a thumb drive off of opensuse using it's product creator module. ~1.5 gig on the thumbdrive leaving me with 2.5 gig on a 4 Gig key. If needed to install it can be done right from the USB key.

really? And is opensuse good, and responsive? Last time i tried just booting the opensuse iso image it took like 20 minutes to display the startup screen. It was slow as s***. :confused:

[deanjo]

really? And is opensuse good, and responsive? Last time i tried just booting the opensuse iso image it took like 20 minutes to display the startup screen. It was slow as s***. :confused:

Boot time after the first boot (runs through some setup for initial network and such which takes about 2 minutes) boot times are <40 seconds on a fast USB keychain after that.

[xav1r]

Boot time after the first boot (runs through some setup for initial network and such which takes about 2 minutes) boot times are <40 seconds on a fast USB keychain after that.

Sounds pretty fast. hmm, and well, knowing that Novell made a pact with microsoft, is there any difference in their opensuse distro? I was avoiding opensuse because novell "engaged in talks with the enemy" :D But maybe that doesnt involve opensuse since its community based.

[deanjo]

Sounds pretty fast. hmm, and well, knowing that Novell made a pact with microsoft, is there any difference in their opensuse distro? I was avoiding opensuse because novell "engaged in talks with the enemy" :D But maybe that doesnt involve opensuse since its community based.

The FUD has made no impact on openSUSE except maybe increased it's popularity.

[Aradreth]

If you don't mind a bit of extra work setting it up you could use larch (http://larch.berlios.de/) and customize it to your needs.

[xav1r]

If you don't mind a bit of extra work setting it up you could use larch (http://larch.berlios.de/) and customize it to your needs.

Seems interesting, thanks ill give it a try! :)