SystemRescueCd comes with both console program and graphical software in order to provide all the software that the user may want. Anyway you may prefer to have just the console programs (file system and disk tools, network commands, editors, …) and to have a disc which is a lot smaller.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to distribute several editions of SystemRescueCd (small/complete, english-only/multilang, …). It would really be too much effort to maintain so many editions. So the policy is to provide only one edition with the most important stuff, and the tools required to customize your disc.

SystemRescueCd-1.1.2 comes with an interesting feature that allows you to remove all the graphical tools with just one command during the customization process. There is a script named sysresccd-cleansys that you can use to remove categories of packages that you don’t want. It was already possible to remove all the development tools (which are required to install and remove packages). Now you can also remove all the graphical tools using sysresccd-cleansys x11tools.

You can find the detailed instructions in the handbook.