Raspbian minimal: What's your choice? (Part I)


Sometime as developer or admin with expertise, we need a distro with a few installed packages and a bunch of free *RAM*. In this case, we can use a *Raspbian* minimal. I cover on this article two of them.

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The main focus is to have a small, updated and stable distribution that is fully compatible with official Raspbian "wheezy" image, without GUI and unneeded tools.

MINImal raspBIAN image for Raspberry Pi (Minibian)

**Download:** [sourceforge.net](http://sourceforge.net/projects/minibian/)

**Last file uploaded:** *2013-10-13-wheezy-minibian.tar.gz (188.5 MB)*

**Login:** *root* | **Password:** *raspberry*

Some useful commands to take a look. Click to full size

**Info:**

• Kernel 3.10.25+ #622 ARM HF (Hard Float)

• 22 secs boot

• 583 Mb disk space used

• Fit on 1GB SD Card

• Optimized ext4 file system with swap disabled

• Targeted for embedded or server applications (NAS, Web server, electronic applications)

• 100% full compatible with official release

• DHCP client enabled

• SSHD enabled

• 45 Mb RAM used after boot

**Notes:** No desktop environment installed, as usual on this kind of distro. **build-essential** is not installed (*60.5 MB* of additional disk space). *config.txt* only with the option to set *GPU*, but you can fill with others as you can see on [elinux.org](http://elinux.org/RPiconfig). **raspi-config** is missing. **camera-utils** is installed by default.

Raspbian Wheezy armhf Raspberry Pi minimal image

**Direct Download:** [linuxsystems.it](http://files2.linuxsystems.it/raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z)

**Last file uploaded:** *raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z (123.4 MB)*

**Login:** *root* | **Password:** *raspberry*

Click to full size

**Info:**

• 3.6.11+ hardfp kernel with latest raspberry pi patches

• Disabled incremental updates, means apt-get update is much faster

• Workaround for a kernel bug which hangs the Raspberry Pi under heavy network/disk loads

• Latest version of the firmwares

• Fits 1GB SD cards

• A very tiny 118MB image: even with a 2GB SD there is a lot of free space

• The clock is automatically updated using ntp

• IPv6 support

• ssh starts by default

• Just 14MB of ram usage after the boot

**Notes:** The author cover two versions: soft or hard float support. *config.txt* have several default options. Boot process is faster than the first *Minibian* commented before. We have a *swap RAM partition*, but you can disable it to reclaim *RAM*.You need to use *gparted* or another similar app to resize the partition, because there is a *swap* partition at the end who doesn't allow to resize the first. You can delete it with the next commands anyway:

parted /dev/mmcblk0
print <- show partitions
rm 3 <- delete partition number 3
quit <- exit from parted

On both distribution **raspi-config** is missing, but you can install it with the next commands:

echo "deb http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/ wheezy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
wget http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/raspberrypi.gpg.key
apt-key add raspberrypi.gpg.key
apt-get update && apt-get install raspi-config -y
raspi-config

Jump to the second part [here](https://misapuntesde.com/post.php?id=363).