I forgot what it’s called but if you really wanna torture yourself you could build your own linux 
Jokes aside, arch should be pretty minimal
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Not surprised to see Arch in the list. Last time I had Manjaro (derivative of Arch) on a laptop with XFCE installed, and after I installed a good amount of software on it, at startup that OS was taking 450MB of RAM with 30+ daemons running, and a fully functioning desktop environment. 
@Exadra37 Maybe you should copy all the links from the ElixirForum thread here?
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It’s called Linux From Scratch:
Welcome to Linux From Scratch!
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code.
Currently, the Linux From Scratch organization consists of the following subprojects:
- LFS :: Linux From Scratch is the main book, the base from which all other projects are derived.
- BLFS :: Beyond Linux From Scratch helps you extend your finished LFS installation into a more customized and usable system.
- ALFS :: Automated Linux From Scratch provides tools for automating and managing LFS and BLFS builds.
- CLFS :: Cross Linux From Scratch provides the means to cross-compile an LFS system on many types of systems.
- Hints :: The Hints project is a collection of documents that explain how to enhance your LFS system in ways that are not included in the LFS or BLFS books.
- Patches :: The Patches project serves as a central repository for all patches useful to an LFS user.
But I don’t have the skills for it or I don’t want to torture my self 
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Yess, that’s the one
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Let’s wait and see what people have to say here 
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And you also have Lenix backed by 1 million dollars a year:
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Are you thinking at Linux from Scratch ? It is a full guide to compile from scratch your own Linux distro.
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There are a few projects starting up hoping to replace CentOS but I think Rocky Linux seems to have the most support at the moment as it is created by one of the original CentOS creators 
Also… I think people are preferring something more independent than backed by a big company… at least that’s the vibe I’m getting 
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LFS is an excellent way to learn how Linux is made and what tools You need to make it work
It was also the way Gentoo worked. You had to work a little to get the most optimized Linux for your usage.
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Elementary OS is minimal and good looking.
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Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s a desktop OS, but I am looking for a server distro.
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Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.
Alpine standard 3.13.1 (Released Jan 28, 2021) is only ~133 MB.
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It’s a strong contender, but this muscl libc is what concerns me the most, because its known to cause issues with some applications.
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Any insider info about CentOS Lucian? 
CentOS 7 could still be a good choice for up to May 2029 which is when it reaches EOL, @Exadra37… (edit: think it might actually be 2024!)
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Nah, no way I would waste my time with an EOL distro.
Hardening a distro takes weeks of work in my spare time. I don’t use any server as they release them, they are just too much open.
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Fair enough… and could you blog about that please? I am always interested in how to secure/harden servers 
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I am documenting every step in a git repo, and making a bash script to run as user data in Digital Ocean or as part of a cloud init configuration.
This is part of my Phoenix360 project, and I will make it available in an Elixir website.
It will have guides for hardening Phoenix, servers and to build 360 web apps.
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musl is widely known to work much slower in specific workflows. People have wrote blog articles demonstrating that going back to libc accelerated parts of their apps tenfold or more.
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https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/
Firecracker enables you to deploy workloads in lightweight virtual machines, called microVMs, which provide enhanced security and workload isolation over traditional VMs, while enabling the speed and resource efficiency of containers. Firecracker was developed at Amazon Web Services to improve the customer experience of services like AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate .
Looks like a good bet,. Need to investigate further.
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