advice for ubuntu on a small machine

[Florian Diesch]

anthony baldwin <photodharma at gmail.com> wrote:

> Florian Diesch wrote:
>> Kjetil Halvorsen <kjetil1001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:51, Justin <eqisow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:43 PM, 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?
>>>>>
>>>>> How small are we talking, here?
>>>> Xubuntu is not really any slimmer than Gnome/KDE, despite what some here
>>>> will tell you.
>>> About 200 MB ram. Windows XP are running on those machines now, very slowly..
>> 
>> "Once installed, Xubuntu can run with starting from 192 (or even just
>> 128) MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB
>> RAM." (http://www.xubuntu.org/get)
>> 
>>> We hope for something slim enough to be faster.
>> 
>> I'd install Xubuntu and a simple window manager and then use that
>> window manager instead of Xfce.
>
> Then why wouldn't you just install crunchbang (ubuntu with openbox 
> default wm)?

I never used it myself and don't know how serious one has to take
"CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage." (http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/about) so I don't
recommend it to others.


> Or use an alternate install that doesn't include any wm, and install 
> whichever other wm it is you want, (like fvwm, icewm, dwm, awm, xmonad, 
> ion3, fluxbox or some other lite/fast wm)?

IMHO it's easier to install Xubuntu and get a decent collection of
programs than to select everything yourself (if you don't mind a few
MByte extra disk space).


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>