Elemental (adjective) - basic, fundamental or elementary
The Elemental Linux Server (ELS) is designed from the outset to be a minimal, no-frills server distribution. There is no GUI, everything is console-based. There is no package manager, packages are installed from .tar.gz files. There is no administration tool, all configuration is done by manually editing files in the /etc directory.
There is also very little bloat in the ELS distribution.
ELS will easily install on the vintage 1995 Pentium computer with 32M of RAM and a 500M hard drive that's sitting in your basement collecting dust. Don't throw it out, reanimate it as a home file server or a personal web server.
Read the administrator's help file to find out more about installing and configuring ELS.
Preview release available
Installation CD
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Source Code CD
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In addition to bug fixes, this release makes several improvements upon its predecessor. Among the updates are the following:
You can browse the new packages at the ELS development site. Please keep in mind that these packages are not official releases and may change at any time.
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This is an older, alpha-quality release. It features the console-based server foundation along with optional packages for Apache, Samba, ProFTPD and more. A single .iso image contains everything you need.
There is also a list of known bugs and deficiencies that have been discovered in this release.