Here is the list of (in my opinion) best Linux distros for mining monero:
- Puppy Linux - minimalistic distro with GUI that boots from usb to ram for diskless use (dont need to spend any money on SSD/HDD for mining rigs). To make it ready for mining I made a "remaster" of Puppy Linux on vm where I wget a zip which contains xmrig and config, then following a tutorial from youtube (https://youtu.be/DnWzbUpwIJ4) made remastered iso. After that copy the iso ventoy usb drive/burn it to usb drive after boot it loads to ram and you can eject the usb, open the terminal and run xmrig or if you need to mine over tor then apt update && apt install tor -y, make sure to configure xmrig to use SOCKS5 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy in the config file and you're ready to mine! 1 GB pages and everything work. If you remaster puppy linux it may not have all sfs files that contain drivers which may prevent booting so follow the tutorial from youtube
- Alpine Linux - minimalistic distro that can run from disk/usb or boot to ram. My setup is running off of usb cause they are way cheaper than any SSD/HDD. I just installed it onto my usb and run xmrig. I would recommend it for that use case.
- Hiren's Boot CD PE - this is not a linux distro but hear me out, I had one mining rig that just didnt boot on any linux but booted perfectly on HBCD. So the setup is make ventoy usb drive > copy HBCD iso and xmrig with config and WinRing0.sys to Ventoy usb > boot from Ventoy usb > copy xmrig config and WinRing0.sys to folder like downloads > physically eject usb (you wont be able to eject it by selecting eject in file explorer) > youre mining now! If you need to mine over tor just install tor browser (copy installer to Ventoy usb before booting) and configure SOCKS5 proxy in xmrig config file to 127.0.0.1:9150 or just 9150.
That's the list. Also you could make PXE boot server on a non mining rig so that there is no SSD/HDD/USB required for mining rigs but I dont know if that really works and never tested just throwing it out there.