How to cut debian down to impossibility?

Question

Debian

Good day!
There are a couple of dozen hardware terminals for connecting to the server via RDP, on which the firmware has flown. Hardware characteristics of the terminals: 500 MB disk space, 1 GB RAM. I want to use debian + xserver + rdesktop/xfreerdp for replacement.
The problem is that all this does not fit into 500 MB (and it is not necessary, in fact). What packages can be removed from debian to use for my needs, naturally without disrupting the functioning of the system itself?

Answer 1

If you have such a question, it will be difficult for you to make something working from debian.
Take a ready made solution like thinstation.github.io/thinstation

Answer 2

With the help of debootstrap, make a minimal system, make a chroot into it and install and configure the necessary packages (kernel, x, bootloader). Wrap the resulting archive and deploy it on the terminals with the installation of the bootloader.
In principle, you can set up one, save the disk to an image, and then write with dd to others.

debootstrap stretch deb-test
du -hs deb-test
269M    deb-test

https://pastebin.com/raw/FCGLZc84
You can even cut it so that the core and Xs fit, and at the end push everything into squashfs.

Answer 3

I would not take a steam bath, but I would put WTware running on PXE and I tried 64 megabytes of RAM, that's enough).