A minimal Debian based Linux system with fully functional bash shell (with GNU coreutils, not BusyBox), TCP/IP networking with DHCP client and APT setup to be able to install any package from the Debian repositories.
The installation media is less than 128 MB, needs no Internet connection and the installation is really quick. The installed system will use 160 MB disk space. (As a comparison, Debian 6.0 takes long time to install and will use at least 330 MB disk space after installation.)
Bachata Linux is intended to be used on cloud servers, virtual appliance and other cases where disk space and/or memory is limited or expensive. It is not intended to be used as a general purpose desktop OS.
The name Bachata Linux come from the dance bachata.
An x86 machine with 64 MB RAM and 160 MB disk space (190 MB for the 64 bit version).
Choose the right CD image for your machine:
Burn the image on a CD-R and boot from it.
If you don't want to boot, you can try to mount the CD image and run the install-bachatalinux script as root with the mount directory as parameter.
Choose the right disk image for your machine:
Write the image to an USB disk (use sudo cp .img-file /dev/sdX where /dev/sdX is the USB disk device) and boot from it.
Download the i386-686 CD image (or i386-686-bigmem if your virtual machine has more than 4 GB RAM), mount it and run the install-bachatalinux-in-kvm-qemu script as root with the mount directory and disk image file to create as parameters.
Then you can start it with virsh start ${HOSTNAME} and connect to it with virsh console ${HOSTNAME}.
Use halt from inside the guest or virsh shutdown ${HOSTNAME} to have a clean shutdown.
Using reboot from inside the guest work as expected in KVM, but not in QEMU (this is a bug in QEMU).
Post an issue if you have found a bug or want to request a specific feature.
Bachata Linux is made by Mikael Ståldal.
Read my blog.
Send an email to me.