Comments on: How little it takes

By: Back to Debian, at 133Mhz and 32Mb « Motho ke motho ka botho

Back to Debian, at 133Mhz and 32Mb « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:19:02 +0000

[...] not a picture-perfect replica of the machine I usually configure, and it takes a little longer to boot, but it sure took a lot less time to wrangle. Sometimes [...]

By: gcc the pig « Motho ke motho ka botho

gcc the pig « Motho ke motho ka botho — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:34:58 +0000

[...] should have realized that some of those packages, although there are very few, would take quite a long time to build if they were updated. So I am partly to [...]

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:22:20 +0000

I enjoyed the little Scarlett O’Hara moment there. And of course, you can link back here if you like. You’re more than welcome.

By: No two are alike « Motho ke motho ka botho

No two are alike « Motho ke motho ka botho — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:39:06 +0000

[...] But at the same time, most graphical X systems can turn off the backlight. Somehow. Magically. So as a troubleshooting measure, I decided to try building X on the 133Mhz Pentium file server and torrent slave. [...]

By: prinzzchavo

prinzzchavo — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:35:54 +0000

Sorry to bother you with replies to old posts, but I just couldn’t get this one out of my mind.

Linux and No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy
Linux and No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy…

So I got a test machine and will soon start testing minimum installations by myself.

Thing is, I remember my first computer (Pentium, 200Mhz 16Mb RAM, R.I.P) used just a 500 Mb HDD, and I got Win95 on it. Either I am remembering it wrong(quite possible after 15 years), or there must be a way for linux to be that small, that fast, and much more useful!

Now, based on this post and some others, I understand you would recommend me trying Crux but, are there any other distros to be really taken into account, if my goal is to have a Desktop environment (running X, if possible) that fits in an old, 2Gb hard drive? LFS, Tiny core, Puppy…all of them seem to be close, but not there.

I know this sounds like hardcore-lightweighting, but still… any suggestion would be very much appreciated.

…as God is my witness, I’m never going to be over 1Gb again!…

PS: I’ll try to document my way to this achievement(if I get it done anyhow) on a blog, and would want to have your permission to mention your work at this blog. Deal?

By: prinzzchavo

prinzzchavo — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:28:06 +0000

Sorry for the misunderstanding of the actual post. Being a newbie, I didn’t know that the kernel source tree could be deleted. Now that I know, I’ll get back to the basics, and see what I can do with my 3Gb Installation.

Thank you for maintaining such an inspiring blog(I guess my real-life commitments will not be that happy ).

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:21:12 +0000

Well, again, the reason it rides at 1.2Gb is because the kernel source folder, after compilation, takes up about 650Mb. Add to that another 300Mb for my ports folder, and the system — the actual system itself — takes up a measly 400Mb or so.

It’s not that bad. Like I said, if I were to clean out those folders it would be much, much smaller.

By: prinzzchavo

prinzzchavo — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:33:32 +0000

Thanks for the listing. I have been taking a look at my own list for a while, and never got under 3 Gb.

Don’t get me wrong but, isn’t still 1Gb a little too much space for a lightweight example?

I mean no disrespect (quite the opposite actually), but, after getting in contact with DSL, and some other Live-Light-Distros, I have the feeling there must be something we can do to lower that down anyhow.

By: mulenmar

mulenmar — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:04:31 +0000

Forgot to put my own suggestions in here — on a netbook, I don’t install man-db or the man pages. In addition to the list you provided, K.Mandla.

I’m curious as to why you would leave out dash, though — it’s slightly more lightweight and works fine as a system-script shell. Or whatever the term for it is.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:01:29 +0000

No need to apologize, tomas. Being new is not a sin.

For my own part, I always omit cryptsetup, dash, dcron, device-mapper, jfsutils, licenses, logrotate, lvm2, mailx, mdadm, ppp, reiserfsprogs, rp-pppoe, texinfo, wpa-supplicant, and xfsprogs. I always add in base-devel and nfs-utils, openssh, sudo and wireless-tools.

Aside from that, I can run a wired, e2fs-only system on what’s there, plus or minus any firmware that’s required.

The funny thing about Arch is though, I know for a fact that a few of those will get installed anyway, as dependencies for either other core setup programs, or further on up the road, when I install software I like.

So really, only about three or four of those might not actually get installed. Some will get drawn in anyway.