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*NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

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ewemoa:
Looking for an easy to install (so recognizes hardware well) *NIX -- though light on resources -- to run as a host OS for running VirtualBox guest OSes on top of.

Seen requests like this but usually see suggestions such as "start with some minimal system and just add VirtualBox and a few other things" -- but was hoping that there was an effort that shipped with VirtualBox as am not too keen on maintaining too much of a customized set up and was hoping if it were bundled that it might be better tested / integrated.

Any recommendations / ideas?  Am currently looking through this list but might also consider this list.


Currently trying CrunchBang, but this requires installing VirtualBox after the OS installation.

Vurbal:
I was looking for the same thing this a few months back but didn't put much effort into it before losing interest. I'd really like to be able to reconfigure my old dual PIII server using Turnkey Linux virtual machines which pretty much requires *Nix.

If I were more ambitious I'd probably look into creating a customized Debian distro for the job. I'm not likely to be that ambitious without some pressing motivation though.

40hz:
Might it make more sense to go up a level of abstraction and use a FOSS type-1 hypervisor like Xen, then install whatever you want (including your distro) under that? Bare-metal hypervisors are as minimal a host footprint as you can get for virtual machines.

40hz:
To use a type-2 hypervisor ( VirtualBox et al) in minimal configuration, the easiest would be to start with a distro's server version. You probably could get a smaller one (TinyCore etc.) to work. But you'd also likely have headaches identifying and installing all the dependencies when you went to install VirtualBox. Starting with the distro's text-based (i .e. non-GUI) server should already include everything you needed without being to bulky since it's the desktop environment and productivity packages that take up most of the space in a distro. A plain old server setup is pretty small.

ewemoa:
Thanks for the suggestions :)


I've made a number of attempts to get Xen working over the years, but without much success...never quite make it far enough.  Have you had good experiences with it?

I'm trying to avoid too many steps during set up (cf. getting Arch and/or Gentoo installed - worth it a few times, but not great if I want to recreate a similar set up from scratch) as well as having VirtualBox or comparable stop working somewhere down the line because of an upgrade...


In the mean time, I tried out Manjaro (with Pamac / Octopi) which was a pleasant surprise -- still a bit rough but looks promising.  There also appears to be some kind of remastering support (ManjaroISO).


Now if DistroWatch.com's "Search Distribution" page would let one specify shipped-by-default packages...

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