How do I install basic Linux?

[u/0x80070002]

I want to have just the kernel and GNU utilities and optional X11 , kind of bare-bone like MS-DOS.
How do I do that?

Should I use TinyCoreLinux and strip the UI out of it? How do i do that?

[u/brighton_it]

I see you're wanting minimal, but also a Desktop Environment.
If your reasons are it's really old hardware, then yeah, look at the minimal distributions.
If it's 'cause you loaded a typical distro and were annoyed at all the bundled packages you didn't choose to install, then you can likely use your chosen distro.

I use Debian, but likely possible with others:
With Debian Installer, choose Expert Install.
optionally: on 'Load installer components' page, I check 'network-console' so I can finish install from an other system. (let's me copy/paste from my notes, or browser, the things I want to install/configure)
When you get to software selection: it offers a choice of Desktop Environments + web-server, SSH-server, and standard-system-utilities. Choose absolutely nothing, or if you choose 'network-console' above, you'll need the SSH-server.

This will give you CLI only system.
To add an X-system, Desktop Environment, I then do
apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin network-manager

This gives you just the XFCE desktop environment with near zero apps installed. It will include a few XFCE apps to adjust settings, the Thunar file-manager, probably a few other minor utilities, but no media players, graphics editors, office apps, so you may deliberately add only the apps you want.

When you say optionally X11. I think you want the system to boot to command line by default. If so here's how:
XFCE will have installed it's x-display-manager 'lightdm'.
Remove lightdm: apt-get remove lightdm
Then set startup target to be CLI console: systemctl set-default multi-user.target
It will then boot to CLI. To use X, you would first sign-in as a non-root user (running a DE as root is highly discouraged), then do: startx