TinyCore (http://tinycorelinux.net) is a unique and minimalist distribution of the Linux operating system and tools. It is very small, just 10MB for the Core base system!

# download iso 
wget http://tinycorelinux.net/7.x/x86/release/Core-current.iso
 
# create a disk image for your VM (100M)
qemu-img create core.img 100M
 
# boot system from cdrom
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -hda core.img -cdrom Core-current.iso -boot d -m 256

Once the Core system is loaded from cdrom, you can follow this tutorial to install the system on the disk image core.img. In brief, download install script and launch it…

tce-load -wi tc-install
sudo /usr/local/bin/tc-install.sh

Then, follow instructions and select:

• install from CDROM
• frugal hard drive installation
• on the whole disk (sda)
• install boot loader (yes)
• formatting in ext4

Now you can halt the system and restart it from the disk image:

# boot system from disk
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -hda core.img -m 256
 
# install azerty/fr keyboard
tce-load -wi kmaps
sudo loadkmap < /usr/share/kmap/azerty/fr-latin9.kmap
 
# install text editor (nano)
tce-load -wi nano

To set azerty/fr keyboard permanently, edit /mnt/sda1/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf and set “kmap=azerty/fr-latin9” option on the APPEND line. Don't work???