UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Alright. Here we go...

The other day, I was referred to this neat little command-line Unix simulator called Cygwin. To put it lightly, I fell in love. I found Knoppix, and from what I can tell, it's a viable OS once I strip off the KDE desktop environment to make it 'old-school'. I'm admittedly not a Linux uber-guru by any means, but I'm willing to learn as much as I can about interfacing via Bash. Anyway...

The applications (i.e. whatever's in Synaptic Package Manager) that I currently have installed are the default applications that came with Knoppix 6.2.1 CD image. I used the application provided by pendrivelinux to write the iso to my USB stick and make it bootable. I can successfully boot and run Knoppix Linux 6.2.1. No problems.

I already have a 5gb unformatted partition on my HD that I'm saving to install Knoppix in. I figured that's enough for a second OS. I'm probably going to be using it as a software development environment. Call me crazy, but I just LOVE the look and feel of a Linux CLI.

Anyway, let's say, for the sake of argument, that I know nothing about Linux. What applications are the BARE NECESSITIES for what I want? I'm not confident enough to go blindly uninstalling what I -think- is unnecessary. There ARE a few things I'd like to keep, though...

I want to have NASM as my assembler, GCC for compiling C and C++ (not including libraries that I can't actually test in a CLI environment, like SDL), Vim as my file editor, irssi as my IRC client, Lynx as my browser. I'm pretty sure that's it. If there's anything else that I might need, I think I can figure out how to find and install it through Synaptic. Err...a command-line-friendly MP3 player would be nifty, as well.

If there's anything else you could suggest to enhance the whole experience, let me know. Keep in mind, this is going to be a home/personal OS. I won't need to set up servers, I won't have multiple accounts, so I honestly don't care about administrative tools. Anything that I can shave off of this to make this my at-home-hacker environment, I'd like to know. How do I get from Point A to Point B?

Thanks! Any help is greatly appreciated.
-Brandon

I've already tried ttylinux, but it just didn't have that "feel". Call me crazy.

EDIT: If you want, I can provide you with a list of everything listed in Synaptic. Thanks again.

Get a netinst or regular installation CD/DVD from debian.org. Burn, install, have fun.

But be aware that as soon as you remove the graphical interface, Synaptic will be gone soon, and you'll have to use apt-get/aptitude.

Getting gentoo running can be quite satisfying. It's not one of the easier distros but its very configurable, and very nice for programmers. You won't have to jump through hoops to get gcc running in it, and you'll never have to track down an obscure -dev package before you can link in anything you've installed.