I'm looking for a small Linux OS, that can fit on either a floppy or a CD. It is needed for a car-computer project i'm working on. The OS only needs to be very minimal, but able to compile programs written in C and of course have drivers for a floppy and CD-ROM.

Anyone have any ideas on which, if any, Linux distros exist for this project?

Knoppix loads and runs directly from the CD, no installation to harddrive needed.
http://www.knoppix.net/

Also, you can do a search on google for "linux on a floppy" and find some small distros.

http://linuxiso.org/

I'm sure you can easily find a distro to suit your needs

Thanks. I'm downloading a Knoppix ISO right now, hopefully it will work for what i need.

Debian net-install iso. Installed, thats 80 Megs. Basicly all you get with that is a command line. I think it comes with gcc, but you have to install 'make' and porbably some libs.

Damn Small Linux is awesome.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

But if you are going to burn a whole cd, you might as well use Knoppix.

You can get smaller than damn small linux.
I use Toms Linux (I think it is called... google search and you will find it).

It fits on a diskette. It loads itself in to main memory.
It is pretty cool. Also a good start if you want to start your own Distro.. ewww auugh! Maybe not.

Anyways.. hope that helps.

your gonna need more than tomsrtbt if you wanna compile C code.