To match the install procedure with the nostalgia, you really should build from source.

True

Centos is pretty compact and easy to setup for purposes of setting up a minimal VM to test this with, though.

Likewise, Debian is one of the most compact mainstream distributions you can run.

Then you get Ubuntu, Mint, etc... for free.

To be honest it's super easy. All he needs to do is to run "checkinstall" from the root of the source tree after a successful compile, and it will generate a valid Debian (ANY SUPPORTED DISTRO) package.

This can of course be done as last pass a part of a CI runner pipeline with Gitlab or Jenkins build job.