The graphical user interface.
Using -comp xz -b 1M provides very high compression at the cost of slower compression speeds. You can experiment with other compressors like zstd or lz4 to balance speed and size.
The effort to use a minimal installer or image pays off in several key scenarios.
Using a minimal system is not without its complexities. Before you begin, be aware of the following: ubuntu highly compressed 10mb
), the size inevitably grows. For a functional desktop, you also need: X11 or Wayland (Display servers) for hardware Desktop Environment (Gnome, XFCE, etc.)
Creating a 10MB Ubuntu installation involves extreme customization and a deep understanding of Linux systems, packaging, and compression techniques. While this guide provides a theoretical approach, actually achieving such a small size would require substantial effort and might not result in a fully functional or practical system. There are, however, more feasible lightweight Linux distributions (like Puppy Linux) that might suit your needs without the complexity of extreme compression.
While Ubuntu offers several installation tiers, even the most stripped-down official versions far exceed 10MB: The graphical user interface
: Resurrecting ancient computers or building custom, minimalistic appliances. Puppy Linux (~400MB)
The 10MB compressed image contains:
For a different kind of minimalism, there's Ubuntu Core. This is not designed for general-purpose servers but for the and embedded devices . Ubuntu Core is a minimal rootfs (root file system), which is the smallest implementation of Ubuntu that allows you to install other packages. Its defining characteristic is that all software, including the OS kernel, is packaged as strictly confined Snaps with transactional (atomic) updates. This makes the system incredibly robust and secure, as any failed update can be automatically rolled back. The rootfs size for Ubuntu Core is larger than 20MB, but it is the official, secure choice for professional-grade embedded applications. The effort to use a minimal installer or
Even if you could compress the system files to 10MB, a modern Linux kernel alone is typically when compressed. Once you add basic command-line tools (
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