linux bare bones

[Typhoeus]

If I wanted a bare bones dos system I could copy msdos.sys io.sys and comand.com to a bootable hard disk and away i go. What are the linux equivelent files and can I just copy them to a disk and point grub to them

[kgarbutt]

Typ,

I can't answer your question, but in terms of having MS DOS running on your linux system checkout DOSBox at www.dosbox.com.

[Typhoeus]

I'm not interested in a DOS system just a very bare bones system that I can use to learn more about linux and hopefully build into a fully personalised distro that does what I want.

Thanks all the same for your time to reply.

[sisco311]

I'm not sure what exactly are you looking for, but you may want to check out:
Ubuntu Minimal (http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/minimal)
debootstrap (http://https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/sparc/linux-upgrade.html)
Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/)
Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/)
ArchLinux (http://www.archlinux.org/)