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copied!<p>Seriously, I think the best thing to do is create your own. Some people for example use Redmine instead of Trac. Finding a pre-configured VM with these specific installations is going to be difficult.</p> <p>So, having the "create your own" as a precondition, I believe you have the following options:</p> <h2>Use a a "VM Aware" distro</h2> <hr> <p>Ubuntu Server comes to mind: <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos" rel="nofollow noreferrer">it has an option to install a minimal installation specific to VMs</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>Download the server ISO image, boot from it, press F4 on the first screen and select "Install a minimal virtual machine".</p> <ul> <li>Less than 380MB installed footprint</li> <li>Specialized server Kernel (-virtual)</li> <li>Optimised for VMWare ESX, VMWare Server and KVM Intel or AMD x86 architecture </li> <li>Minimum memory 128MB</li> <li>No graphical environment preloaded as it is aimed at server virtual appliance</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>IMHO, you're going to spend at most a day configuring your VM to your tastes, not weeks. Using apt-get is going to save you some time in almost all packages in your feature list. </p> <p>...and if you want even more customization, you can even try to use <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder" rel="nofollow noreferrer">vmbuilder</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>vmbuilder is a script that automates the process of creating a ready to use VM based on Ubuntu. There is no need for a JeOS CD image. The currently supported hypervisors are KVM, Xen and VMware.</p> </blockquote> <h2>Use a well known distro and "strip it down"</h2> <hr> <p>Install a <a href="http://tuxonomy.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/debian-minimal-install-of-a-base-system-lenny-aka-5-0/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">minimal Debian system</a> and strip down some features, or create a <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/HowTo/SmallSizeImage" rel="nofollow noreferrer">small live image</a> and use it.</p> <h2>Use <a href="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Linux From Scratch (LFS)</a> and build a system only with essential software</h2> <hr> <p>This is the most difficult one and you're going to spend a lot of time. </p> <p>But you'll be able to have a really small distribution and understand how a Linux system really works. Understanding how everything works you can install just what is needed in your setup, and use lighter binaries like <a href="http://www.busybox.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Busybox</a>.</p> <p>There's an old project called <a href="http://www.suramya.com/linux/tutorials/Install_DFS/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Debian From Scratch</a> (last update is from 2006, so I don't know if it's reliable) that aims to do the same LFS does but using Debian.</p> <blockquote> <p>(...) is a unique distribution that allows you to install a Debian system with almost the same level of control as what you would get with a Linux From Scratch installation but with the Debian advantages (easy to update and maintain).</p> </blockquote> <h2>You just want a Damn Small Linux out-of-box solution</h2> <hr> <p>Well, you can try <a href="http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Damn Small Linux</a>, it's only 50mb and Debian Based and I believe it's the most famous minimal distribution (<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros" rel="nofollow noreferrer">you can check more distros in this list</a>). I just don't know how it would perform in a Web Server Development scenario.</p> <h2>Final advice</h2> <hr> <p>To all situations above, after configuring, save your VM as a default one for future use. Or better, use snapshots, each one with minor differences you may have with your installation (beware though that controlling too many snapshots may be a little cumbersome).</p> <h2>"I don't want to configure my own"</h2> <hr> <p>If for some reason you didn't like my approaches or don't have too much time to follow my advice ("create your own VM") you can check <a href="https://serverfault.com/questions/32658/light-weight-virtual-machines-nix-distributions">this question on ServerFault</a>. There's a list for a bunch of appliances from different distros.</p> <p>...but if you're going to test a bunch of them, to see if they fit your needs, why not just use the time spent with them creating your own?</p> <h2>Icing on the cake: use <a href="http://vagrantup.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Vagrant</a> to manage your vms.</h2> <hr> <blockquote> <p>Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments.</p> <p>By providing automated creation and provisioning of virtual machines using Oracle’s VirtualBox, Vagrant provides the tools to create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable virtual environments.</p> </blockquote> <p>This means Vagrant helps you automating a lot of things you usually do when creating a new VM (these features are from the official website):</p> <ul> <li>Automated virtual machine creation using Oracle’s VirtualBox</li> <li>Automated provisioning of virtual environments using Chef, Puppet, or just shell scripts!</li> <li>Full SSH access to created environments</li> <li>Assign a static IP to your VM, accessible from your machine</li> <li>Forward ports to the host machine</li> <li>Shared folders allows you to continue using your own editor</li> <li>Package environments into distributable boxes</li> <li>Completely tear down environment when you’re done</li> <li>Easily rebuild a complete environment with a single command</li> </ul> <p>I would create a vm with the same configuration (well, almost the same) as my production server, so some platform problems would not appear just when deploying.</p>

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