Linux Kernal - Installation

I am new to linux... having worked and been trained in MS systems for what feels like an eternity.... Now that i am starting out with Linux, i wish to start at the very begining and am asking for some assistance with regards to....

All i want on the machine is :

GRUB - The bootloader
Linux Kernal with BASH, no additional editors or tools.

When i boot there are no packages installed, just the two above mentioned items and their dependincies. Is this at all possible and what is the procedure ?

Many thanks to anyone who can assist.

Sounds to me like you should go with gentoo or some LFS distro.

Before i began with linux I installed a full and easy to use distro with a GUI. Mostly because i knew working with a GUI was much easier than starting immeadiatly with the CLI. If I where you I would start with Mandrake or Fedora. These are quite easy installations and give you a rough but good idea of how linux actually works, dont start off right away with just a CLI because it will get really confusing sometimes.

Check out www.linuxquestions.org for some excellent support for many linux questions but offcourse you can also ask them here ;)

But im not the one making your desicions so if you really want to start of with just a CLI version try: Slackware

LFS (LinuxFromScratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/)) is the closest thing available to what you are asking. The only "problem" is that in order to create your LFS Linux you need an already up & running Linux distribution from which you will compile the parts of your LFS Linux.

If you are new to Linux, do as mindspin says & get an easy to use GUI based distribution such as SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake, etc.

You can find the ISO files for a large array of Linux distributions @ Linuxiso.org (http://www.linuxiso.org/)