Minimizing CentOS?

Question

linux

Hello. I am writing a term paper on the topic "Minimizing CentOS". As a result, you will still need to save the work of the graphical browser. I start from CenOS minimal installation, which actually needs to be further minimized. There are a couple of questions for those in the know:
1) Is there any way to safely delete files in /usr/lib/modules/kernel/*.ko? That is, see which files (modules) are loaded into the kernel using lsmod, and delete all unnecessary ones. If yes, what is the best way to do it.
2) Any tips on how to remove unwanted packages? Already wrote a script that removes packages that no one refers to. Maybe you can suggest something else.
3) If you were given such a task, how would you approach it?
This whole process must be automatized, i.e. write scripts in bash. Manually deleting one at a time will not work.
Thanks for all the replies

Answer 1

You're not looking in the right direction at all.
I have one piece of iron at work, based on Atom, has been idle for a long time. I decided to make a thin client with x2go support out of it, for which I tried to install the minimum CentOS and .. then I found out that installing CentOS, even in the minimum configuration, requires at least 1.5GB of memory, while only 1GB is available on the piece of iron NAND. I googled how you can make your own minimal configuration with only the necessary software, removed alsa support, some firmware, NetworkManager, plymouth and other small things. As a result, the system was not only installed, but there was also room for the X server and the x2go client.
Google install CentOS via your own kickstart file. The second tip is to look at i386, not x86_64.

Answer 2

3) If you were given such a task, how would you approach it?

Mastered would LFS.
Build the kernel by deleting what you don't need (and don't bother with point 1).
Remove extra packages. They are usually associated with services that you don't need.
Use a compressed file system (Ubuntu put it in SquashFS for sure).
Well, that's all.

Answer 3

Before it's too late, change the subject from "Minimizing CentOS" to "Maximizing LFS or Gentoo to goofy and pretty".

Answer 4

Sorry, dear, but this is nonsense. EL6/EL7 is a "set it and forget it" enterprise distribution, you don't need to "minimize" anything in it.
Genta, slack, LFS (for the most stubborn) is taken - and its deployment begins. Here you can get a system in which there will be nothing at all.
To keep the browser working, you will need a bunch of everything - a lot of X-libs, toolkits and other things (not counting what the browser brings with it).

Answer 5

centos is not the best choice for this topic , of
course there is Genta, lfs for maniacs.
And I would prefer alpine.

Answer 6

1. How do you plan to keep this state when updating the kernel? A new directory will appear with all the standard modules.
2. I would manually install the minimum configuration - and then manually unload the list of packages via rpm -qa, for example - analyze them and remove the packages that I think are unnecessary while maintaining dependencies - I would make a list of them.
But there are several problems:
1. From version to version, the list of dependencies changes - and removing packages from the list can lead to the fact that something necessary for work will be removed from the dependencies.
2. The option with hard minimization will make it impossible to support the system, install updates, additional packages, etc.