Strangely, while mentioning Damn Small Linux, geek.com doesn't mention that it's the same person, Robert Shingledecker, behind it and Tiny Core. Apparently, there's been some drama involved (<a href="http://www.shingledecker.org/andrews.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.shingledecker.org/andrews.html</a>) and Shingledecker had to leave Damn Small Linux to stagnation, while Tiny Core is reincarnation of his ideas on a new level.
What's the smallest conceivable reliable distro I can host Rails (or, better, JRuby/Rails) on? Getting it up and running on Tiny Core seems like a Project.
Tiny Core is also a nice small, and therefore fast to download, payload for a network-booted system with gPXE:<p><a href="http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/tinycore" rel="nofollow">http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/tinycore</a>