Jonathan Ernst wrote:
If you remove the word processor I think you'll be under 30-40MB uncompressed with these ones:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ http://www.zenwalk.org/staticpages/index.php?page=20050321031055330
I didn't find a ready to use minidistro with gnome or/and kde as these applications are really big. You could also try something like ubuntu and install only the minimum reqs of Wine.
Thanks for your efforts; looking forward to testing your VMWare machines !
For the record, I still think it's a better idea to make older releases compileable by applying the minimalistic patches required. It has several advantages:
a.) Effort can easily be shared by multiple volunteers by simply identifying individual patches needed to compile correctly. b.) Patches are usually required not only by one release, but by one release _and_ all prior releases. Lots of prior releases can be fixed at the same time, once a culprit has been identified. c.) Hotfixing requires a lot less effort than the virtual machine approach.
Depending on how much effort the VM thingy is, I might only make the one or two VMs that I need for my testing, and just modify th{at/ose} as I go along.