So I think a good first step would be to start with a minimal installation of your favorite Linux distribution, and only resort to "extra slim" alternatives if the need arises. If it does, Damn Small Linux might be worth looking at, though I don't know how well it is suited for server applications.

I am not worried at all about the RAM size.

But I need to build a whole system that does not consume more than 32GB of disk space and that I think will take some tinkering which is why I thought that maybe starting with source-based distros would be easier than trying to slim down Debian.

As I find such things not that fascinating I'd rather avoid going down too many blind alleys...

My Mandriva desktop from which I'm typing this has about 9.5 gigs in /home (data and some programs) and about 9.5 gigs in the rest of the system.

In that 9.5 gigs I have lots of things installed. That includes 3D games. I have multiple database systems installed. There are two office suites. I have many graphics, audio, video, and animation editing packages installed. I keep around about a dozen different web browsers for testing. There's a mail server, a web server, an SSH server, and a DNS server. There are (at least) three perl installations on the system right now. There are at least six versions of the JRE installed. WINE and DOSBox are on there, along with some software written for Windows (the DOS "drive" mounts from my home directory though). Then there's all the logs, spools, docs, and other non-program data that's in the system.

If you're having trouble fitting a Linux distribution, your code, and your data onto 32 gigs of space, then there's something very wrong or your code and data are very large.

With 32 GB to play with this wont be a problem. You could easily create a proof of concept build containing everything you need using the Debian netinst CD within Virtualbox (or similar product).

32 GB disk space is quite a lot, too. For what you want to do, a Debian base install plus the few extra packages you need should not require more than 2-5 GB.

But I need to build a whole system that does not consume more than 32GB of disk space and that I think will take some tinkering

Not at all. My non-minimalistic Debian installation takes 11GB, which includes all latex packages (quite a lot), a graphical environment, apache2, postgresql, a news spool, an office suite and so on.

I don't use the distributions like SuSE or RedHat, but I'm pretty sure that even they will fit nicely onto 32GB hard disc.

Perl 6 - second systems done right

If you don't need a full Perl, you can likely save quite some space by looking at staticperl. Alternatively, you can install just miniperl or microperl. You won't be able to install any modules that require XS after the master installation, and I'd be careful to always point out that this is not a "full Perl", but if you're pressed for space, that might help.

Debian also ships the Perl documentation separately, so looking at what they leave out might also help.

I'm not sure how you would get even close to 32GB for an Linux OS unless you are adding oodles of features and have lots of cute graphics files or mountains of data. Did you have 32G reserved for the OS or for the OS + Data?

• Damn Small Linux clocks in at 50 Mb. (yes Mb, 0.05G). This is a Debian based (but not exactly Debian) distro.
• Feather Linux which is Knoppix based clocks in at 150Mb
• Debian itself offers a 650Mb CD image and a 4.4Gb DvD image - see http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/#stable

According to Debian the installed size of Apache server is 100K. The installed size of MySQL client is 50K and MySQL server is 88K. Perl is part of the OS. So your packages add less than 250K.

Last time I looked at Linux distros, they all have "live-CDs", and full installations that fit in just a few CDs.

Only a few years ago, I build Linux systems for boxes with 8Mb memory, 25Mb of disk space, with the option of installing it from a floppy disk. Obviously, Perl didn't fit. What did fit was a kernel (same kernel used elsewhere in the company - standard kernel + 1500 bugfixes), a few drivers for exotic hardware, busybox, a couple of C programs I had written or modified, and an init script. This wasn't based on any existing distro.

My current idea is to use something like Gentoo or Arch and try to slim that down as much as possible, but I would like to get some recommendations from people that have more experience with such things.

But this isn't really a Perl question, is it?

As others have pointed out, you have plenty of resources to run a normal distro. If you do run into major constraints, you might want to check out Openembedded and T2 SDE.