I am looking for some help on this from a linux expert. I am very novice when it comes to linux so I am hoping someone can help out. I need a small distro, that is stable. I don't need a full X server or window manager, I only need it to run one single application with a basic UI that consists of a viewport.I would like for the distro to be as small as possible. 700 mb or less would be ideal. Is their a base distro of ubuntu or similar that I can add whatever I need to it from the command line. Which basically is the kernel and some way of graphical output. I was thinking of putting Direct FB on it to render the application. Can anyone help me out here? Even a live distro would work. 
Need small distro without a desktop or windows manager, just to run a single graphical app
linux;ubuntu;kernel;x11;small distribution
Have a look at TinyCore Linux. It comes in two variants, one CLI and one including X.The X version including a window manager and a simple desktop is about 12MiB. If you don't need a window manager, you can just start X and your application. A window manager is not required.