advice for ubuntu on a small machine

[David Curtis]

On Thu, 21 May 2009 12:43:39 -0400
Kjetil Halvorsen <kjetil1001 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am considering installing ubuntu or something like that on some old, small
> machines. xubuntu could be a good choice (I understand that is based also on
> 
> gtk, so most gnome programs should work). But even xubuntu could be to
> large.
> 
> What other good options are there, to maintain some compatibility with
> gnome programs? We need absolutely GNU emacs with auctex for
> tex/latex stuff, and abiword or even openoffice would be nice. Also firefox.
> 
> ¿What options are there?
> 

My suggestion would be a cli install of Jaunty from the alternate cd and LXDE on top of it. (Light Xwindows Desktop Environment based on openbox) [0]

All the applications you mentioned above are not gnome specific, emacs and abiword should be no problem on tightly resourced machines. I would consider ditching OO.o and firefox in favour of smaller standalone apps and Midori from the PPAs as a replacement browser [1] (not from the repos).

Firefox is the big memory hog here, a 200MB machine is going to get very slow running it.

[0] http://www.lxde.org/lxde
[1] https://launchpad.net/~midori/+archive/ppa

-- 
David Curtis <dcurtis at uniserve.com>