Ubuntu Mini-RAM HOWTO

[Ozitraveller]

Ingo Lantschner Wrote: 
> Ozitraveller wrote:
> > I tried this yesterday 'Debian Installation with the Net-Installer
> RC2'
> > at 
> > http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9271,
> > 
> > And this 'Ubuntu Mini-RAM HOWTO today, 
> > 
> > and now i'm going to try 'Damn Small Linux ' at
> > http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/. Yet another fine Debian base distro!
> > 
> Really intersting. Can you please post a small report/comparison?!
> TIA, Ingo.
> 
> 
> -- 
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

Before I start I must say I'm no expert with linux, I've only been
playing with it for about 12 months.

Allright here goes. And I'll do this in the order I did the installs.
And it was all on the same box and old Dell PII/300 32mb Radeon
(unknown model) and 256mb ram, and 2 X 8gb drives. It cost me nothing,
the local pc shop had thrown it out!

I tried Debian 'Debian Installation with the Net-Installer RC2' first,
using D-I rc2 and the instructions from OSNews (link above). I went for
the newest version kernel 2.6.9 and unstable Sid. I did install iceWm
and was hoping that the new Control Panel would be available, it
wasn't! I select the tin theme, I like the black desktop background,
and  the default I think is too chunky. I installed the option 1 apps:
x-window-system mozilla-firefox mozilla-thunderbird icewm icewm-themes
firehol nano. I was happy  as this was my first effort and it all
worked! But it set me to thinking about a quicker/lighter browser and
email app.

Next, I installed 'Ubuntu Mini-RAM HOWTO'. I was quite a simple
install, about the same as the previous. But I did notice some annoying
error messages I couldn't fix, about the locales not being setup and
reverting to the default 'C'. By this stage I was looking for an easy
way to customise iceWM and I'd been to the iceWM site so I know there
were extra tools. But they weren't available in the warty repositories
and I know I could have gotten them from Debian or iceWM, but that I
felt would be not good for a comparison.  I didn't install Open Office
it's too slow and a big install. The big question I have is, could I
now upgrade to the Hoary repositories, and what effect would X.org (the
hoary default) have? I did try firefox, but the system eventually froze
whan I had 3 tabs open browsing a few sites. I had to do a hard reboot
to get out!

So far I think Debian produces a more responsive desktop (just slightly
quicker), and no error messages.

And the last I tried was DSL (Damn Small Linux). I didn't do the
install, I just used the live cd. It uses FluxBox window manager, 
which needs some further investigation on my part, maybe too minimal
for me at the moment. DSL give you a very simple system with the main
apps launched from icons on the desktop and no menus. It too has
firefox, which had rendering problems. The 2 points that would put me
off using DSL, were the lack of a simple install, and that fact that
it's not quite 100% Debian. But I did find a nice list of apps for a a
minimal install.

What I decided:

I reinstall Debian, only this time I did Sarge with the latest kernel.
I installed : x-window-system-core mozilla-firefox Sylpheed aterm menu
icewm icewm-themes iceme firehol. But I'm going to try Dillo web
browser, which I found in DSL, and the screenshots look good and it's
available in Debian. 

I think it was worthwhile exercise.


-- 
Ozitraveller