Can I use TC as a reusable JVM platform?

[greymatter]

I went looking for the smallest Linux possible and found TinyCore.  My goal is to run three or four VMware machines on a single laptop, each running its own SonicMQ and/or Sonic ESB containers in a JVM, without overtaxing the laptop.  (You can see why Linux needs to be lightweight.)

There are standard things I want to install into the base Linux VM (such as SSH, Ruby, and a JRE, at the very least -- preferrably a pre-installed SonicMQ container, as well), so that I have a ready-to-go platform that I can reuse.  And I'd be happy to uninstall the desktop and stick with command-line only.  I want the VMware image to be as small as possible for ease of transport.

Is this a reasonable thing to attempt with TinyCoreLinux?  I'm having a heck of a time just getting it installed in VMware, and I'm concerned about the whole TCE, TCZ thing.  Can I install Java and SonicMQ to a permanent filesystem and bundle up this reusable VMware image?

If I'm asking too much of TCL, any recommendations on another tiny distro would be appreciated.  And if TCL makes sense for this job, any tips on how to get this done would be equally appreciated.

Many thanks,
Lee

[^thehatsrule^]

TC comes with the dropbear ssh server.  There are extensions for ruby and jre (haven't heard of SonicMQ).

If you want to remove the desktop part, that would mean removing the x server and related libs, and the included x dependent apps in a remaster.  It's probably a good idea to leave this as a last optional task.

You might want to take a look at the "core concepts" page which describe the various supported modes of running TC.