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smallest Mandrake 10 install


arthur
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I'd like to know how much HD space it would take to install a bare-bones mandrake 10...

 

1) What WM is the lightest?

2) What File manager is the lightest? (must be included in the 3 MDK10 install cds)

3) can a 266Mhz Pentium 2 w/ 32mb ram and a 600mb HDD handle these?

 

I also have to install apache, perl, a browser(Dillo? Mozilla?) and optionally a Postgresql Database server.

I know there are many minimalist distros out there, but I'd like to stick with mandrake for a while since it's what I have working now, and I have a deadline to meet. It would be nice to be able to play with Gentoo or Small Linux on this, but I'm really short on time.

 

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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Hello!

 

1) You probably don't want to use the lighest window manager! :lol: Choosing among those that will not get you lost, I would choose IceWM because it is the lightest WM on Mandrake CDs.

2) I think everyone will agree on ROX (which can also handle desktop icons). Unfortunately, AFAIK, it is not on Mandrake CDs. Download it! it is small, even for a 56K modem (as I have).

3) Yes, though RAM is a little short (my Mandrake laptop (P150MMX) has 32MB RAM, and I use IceWM, though I *can* use Gnome).

 

No problem with running servers. My fore-mentionned laptop runs ldap and apache. Servers are lighter on resources than many think, because most of the time, they just wait for something to happen.

Running perl is like running bash: you don't have any Linux without perl ;-)

For the browser with so little RAM, I recommend latest Netscape 4 (4.79 I think), because it is fast, uses no qt/gtk, and also handles mail well. That being said, it is convenient to have "links" lying around. Especially links-graphic.

 

Yves.

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I go with YinYeti...

If you could do away with X then you would be looking at a few hundred MB... minimal install.

 

If its being used as a server then its better to use Webmin etc for config and just not use X altogether...

 

32MB will to tight but doable... but even with IceWM (which would be my recommendation too for familiarity as well as being oin the CD's) it isnt pleasant when your also running a database and lots of server type services.

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Good lord! Netscape 4????

Any web developer would shoot you on sight for using that.

 

Really.....

 

What about Dillo?

 

You could try Firefox, too although its a much bigger customer.

 

Fluxbox would be alright on this compy, its not overly complicated, looks cool and is lots of fun. If you really want the lightest wm, fvwm is very light but an amazing bitch to configure. Another lightweight is oroborus, www.oroborus.org, but i really think you would be better off getting fluxbox or icewm.

 

Ill agree on ROX, its a very cool app, although awfully unusual at first, it becomes a very cool proggy to use after not to long, im not goin back, its such a great proggy.

 

iphitus

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I installed ML-10-OE on a 1GB partition at 300, or is it 350, MB.

 

Yes, but not icewm-light, just icewm, what is it icwm-gnome. Then you can use epiphany which is much faster and lighter than firefox. Bookmarks suck, but I'm getting used to them. It's gnome dep. Then you'll be able to use abiword and other independent lighter apps.

 

I agree with rox, although if you want to download forget all that has been said and go with xfce4, which has it's own very light filemager that is a lot like rox.

 

Of course, you could go with icewm-light and find/use all the gtk+1.2 apps. Browser? I d/k.

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You guys are cool! Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

Actually, I need X since I won't be the one to administer the server when I'm done setting it up. Some engineer used to windows will, and he would complain too much if I just gave him a text console. People just don't know anymore how powerful a text-based console really is. :(

 

But that aside, I'm now looking at IceWM and blackbox as the WMs and Rox as the file manager. Has anyone here used Dillo the web browser? can it handle perl-cgi-generated pages? hopefully it won't be too hard to compile, or even better if it has a Mandrake rpm. I'll have to recompile the kernel to build it real small, but that would be after I manage to get all my scripts running.

 

Er, the apache and database server won't be network servers, just local servers. I originally planned this machine to be a client, but the evil Server software vendor wouldn't allow me to hook it up, so I opted for standalone. Hopefully it won't be too slow with one user at a time.

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You guys are cool! Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

Actually, I need X since I won't be the one to administer the server when I'm done setting it up. Some engineer used to windows will, and he would complain too much if I just gave him a text console. People just don't know anymore how powerful a text-based console really is. :(

 

But that aside, I'm now looking at IceWM and blackbox as the WMs and Rox as the file manager. Has anyone here used Dillo the web browser? can it handle perl-cgi-generated pages? hopefully it won't be too hard to compile, or even better if it has a Mandrake rpm. I'll have to recompile the kernel to build it real small, but that would be after I manage to get all my scripts running.

 

Er, the apache and database server won't be network servers, just local servers. I originally planned this machine to be a client, but the evil Server software vendor wouldn't allow me to hook it up, so I opted for standalone. Hopefully it won't be too slow with one user at a time.

 

Yep but Arthur you can still have webmin....(18MB) you can build a very robust box without X at all and just use a browser to administer it... very little cant be done from webmin especially server tasks...

 

If you want this as a server, not a workstation then this is probably simpler than MCC!

 

 

Dillo is very light, very fast but limited!

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Good lord! Netscape 4????

Any web developer would shoot you on sight for using that.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I would for instance :lol2:

 

But let's be realistic: with 32MB RAM, you cannot afford gtk/qt libraries. So that leaves:

1- Mozilla+derivates

2- Dillo, links, w3m... : the lightest of the lightest (though not feature-less)

3- Netscape 4

 

Solution 1 is way too heavy! Solution 2 is perfect for many solutions, but not all; I *did* recommand having links-graphic.

 

So only solution 3 remains, it seems. It can handle ALL most-used protocols and languages for web/ftp/mail: SSL, HTTPS, HTTP, FTP, NEWS, POP, IMAP, CSS, Javascript, rich-text mail... It actually handles mail *very* well.

You only *have to* know that 20% of CSS and Javascript won't run as expected, and half of it won't run at all... Just remember you only have 32MB RAM (how would IE 4.0 compare?)

 

There's in fact one solution I know nothing about: Opera. protocols? languages? toolkit?...

 

Yves.

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can a 266Mhz Pentium 2 w/ 32mb ram and a 600mb HDD handle these

 

I don't know if the installer will run on 32MB of ram. I believe it requires 64MB. You may be able to install in text mode however.

 

You may be better off with a distro that's designed to run on more modest hardware like damn small linux or vector linux.

Edited by pmpatrick
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