Many datacentres offer a ‘minimal’ distro:

The minimal images generally contain no software other than SSH, allowing an unlimited scope for creativity.

Operating System	Versions
Arch Linux latest	Minimal (64-Bit)
CentOS 6.10	Minimal (64-Bit)
CentOS 7.7	Minimal (64-Bit)
CentOS 8.1	Minimal (64-Bit)
Debian 8.11 (Jessie)	Minimal (64-Bit)
Debian 9.12 (Stretch)	Minimal (64-Bit)
Debian 10.3 (Buster)	Minimal and LAMP (64-Bit)
Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (Xenial Xerus)	Minimal (64-Bit)
Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (Bionic Beaver)	Minimal and Nextcloud (64-Bit)
Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo)	Minimal (64-Bit)
Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine)	Minimal (64-Bit)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)	Minimal (64-Bit)

EG: https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/operating-systems/standard-images/

Not surprised to see Arch in the list. Last time I had Manjaro (derivative of Arch) on a laptop with XFCE installed, and after I installed a good amount of software on it, at startup that OS was taking 450MB of RAM with 30+ daemons running, and a fully functioning desktop environment.

@Exadra37 Maybe you should copy all the links from the ElixirForum thread here?

I am documenting every step in a git repo, and making a bash script to run as user data in Digital Ocean or as part of a cloud init configuration.

This is part of my Phoenix360 project, and I will make it available in an Elixir website.

It will have guides for hardening Phoenix, servers and to build 360 web apps.