I’ve always been a fan of extremely small Linux installs. Back when I first started using computers, I didn’t have access to great hardware. In the early 2000s I was using Pentium133 and eventually a Pentium III based system and I remember running floppy Linux (live boot off a floppy disk) and DSL (damn small Linux) in attempts to maximize the performance of the hardware I had.
Running Linux on a tiny ESP32 board just blows my mind!
I remember using one called crunch bang on my 1.6 ghz Sempron machine.
Crunchbang was my JAM around 2010ish. Ran it on my old Thinkpad T23 and then T42. What a great project. I went looking for it a couple months back but it’s no longer maintained. I’ve just switched back to Arch and I’m happy enough with that.