Jump to content

About Debian for old laptop...


Recommended Posts

My laptop is a P.MMX 150, has 32MB ram, 2GB harddisk, and currently runs Mdk9.1.

On it, I absolutely need:

- tmdns server,

- dhcp client,

- a firewall,

- xinetd server (with sshd enabled),

- apache server (with PHP enabled),

- an X server,

- IceWM or similarly small WM,

- an IMAP server (currently BincIMAP),

- firefox,

- an IMAP mail client,

- either urpmi or apt, with CD sources (when disconnected) and net sources (when connected).

 

I have all that with Mdk, and the laptop runs fine, but there are some facts that I dislike:

1- this quite basic installation eats up about 1.2GB from the 2 available,

2- the boot process is long,

3- Mdk tends to suppose a powerfull computer, and start "useless" things,

4- some config files that I'd like to stay the way they are have a tendency to get altered... (does not happen with Mdv2005).

 

So what I would like is to solve those issues, especially 1- and 4-.

Note that:

- I'm reasonably happy with my current config,

- newer Mandrake won't install (CD drive not recognized with a 2.6 kernel),

- I want to have the newest possible kernel under those circumstances.

 

Also: some points raised above could be solved by tweaking the defaults, but that's something I don't want, not only because it takes time, but because I want the installation to be an easily reproduceable process.

 

So I wondered if using Debian, or a Debian-based distribution would lighten things a bit. I've done some searches already, and I'm wondering more specifically if installing DSL with the apt database add-on, or simply pure Debian, would be an improvement?

 

Thanks for any opinion.

 

Yves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i guess the best shot would be to go for dsl here as it has access to the complete range of debian packages. it is very variable and the base install is incredibly small, which would be fine for that lappy. other alternative would be pure debian of course. there is not much else i would recommend from the debian-distros.

 

about point 4 of your "wishlist": this can be caused by the filesystem you use. reiserfs is known to overwrite customized config files with default values and locking those files does not always work, which is why i stick to ext3.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you arctic :)

 

reiserfs is known to overwrite...
:o Really. Amazing. I'm glad it never happened to me (I'm using ReiserFS since Mdk7.2).

I am indeed sure ReiserFS is not the culprit here; Mdk is :lol:, because (main file here is /etc/resolv.conf) this happens while network config is being altered, so it is a "magic trick" of Mandrake being overzealous :(

I could trace the problem and correct it of course, but as I said, all is OK with Mdv2005, and I try not to alter the defaults too much.

 

From your signature, I deduce you're a Ubuntu user. That's interesting. I pondered for a while on Ubuntu, but if you're one of its users, and you don't advise for it in my situation, I'll trust you and forget about it.

 

How does pure Debian behave compared to Mandrake/Mandriva, for the points 1-, 2-, and 3-, in average?

 

Yves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

erm, arctic, that comment about reiserfs is kinda completely illogical and certainly not true.

 

Configuration files, to the filesystem are just regular files, reiserfs does not see them any differently than any others. It also does not keep 'backup' or 'default' copies that it would be able to overwrite your configs with.

 

reiserfs will not overwrite config files with other files or default files, it indeed does not even have the capacity to do that. Unless a userspace program instructs that the files are overwritten, in which case filesystem makes zero difference. To any userspace program, there is zero difference creating, moving, modifying, removing files on and between any filesystem, ext2, ext3, reiserfs, reiser4, XFS, JFS, HPFS, SHFS,GmailFS or <insert filesystem here>. Except of course when a filesystem is incapable of performing something that is requested, such as Fat32's inability to deal with permissions.

 

whatever caused you to lose your config, it wasnt reiserfs, it's innocent, and its not even capable of doing that alone. trust me, I *know* that it wasnt reiserfs.

 

iphitus

Edited by iphitus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well after reading the horror stories about reiserfs on the gentoo forums i'll be staying far away from it. Nothing wrong with ext3 anyway, it's stable, fast and i see no reason to change.

 

 

sure you dont mean reiser4? older versions of reiserfs once caused problems as well, but now it's just as reliable as ext3, and faster.

 

iphitus

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:o I leave my thread unattended for some hours, and when I come back it's off-topic :evilmod: :lol: :lol: I have already stated that ReiserFS is OK for me (BTW, indeed I have read bad things some months ago about ReiserFS 4, but this one is a complete rewrite, and it's ReiserFS 3 that I'm using)

 

So... any more comments about Debian &co. ?

 

Yves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

reiserfs will not overwrite config files with other files or default files, it indeed does not even have the capacity to do that. Unless a userspace program instructs that the files are overwritten, in which case filesystem makes zero difference.
iphitus, it has to do with reiserfs. i have examined this problem a lot and tested debian, slackware, gentoo, mandy, fedora, suse and others with both, reiserfs and ext3 filesystems in order to make sure that it is not a distro specific problem. and it was only reiserfs that somehow allowed the base system the unlocking of locked config files so that the linux distro could overwrite that file again and again and again (and this did not only apply to the famous /etc/resolv.conf file).

 

i talked about this problem with our yoper staff and the core-developers agreed that it is a temporary problem they encounter with reiserfs. i don't know however if that prob got 100% solved by now.

 

now, back on topic:

 

yes, i use ubuntu (together with slack, yoper, fedora and mandy) but why don't i recommend ubuntu? well, i think ubuntu is good for a desktop pc as it ships with gnome 2.10 by default, but i have no clue how stable/usable it will be as a server, so i am a bit cautious to recommend it. and: ubuntu needs more than 32 mb ram. :P

 

about debian: a minimal install is (i guess) somewhere around 500-600 mb, depending on what you install and enable. the debian installer lets you configure quite a lot of things, like support for certain ide types etc. (in advanced mode), so your system can be really customized (it is a bit similar to the slackware install procedure). the boot speed in debian is quite good (a bit faster than mandy or fedora imho) and adjusting services can further speed up the system, as we all know. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Either stay on what you have, or try the latest Vector Linux (5.1). Vector is desktop-oriented, so some of the daemons you need won't be present right out of the box, but you can get them from Slack repos.

I know nothing running better on old machines than this distro, and its administation is exheptionally easy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'm using pure Debian, and you can install only what you need quite easily. With the discs, it'll eventually come to a "task-based" installation: Desktop, various Servers, and manually select packages. You also have the option to check nothing and go about your business. You can check the server and then manually install X and IceWM or whatever you want to use (what I did), which'll work fine and result in reduced hard drive space, as the Desktop installation installs a bunch of stuff you don't need :).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for all the comments!

I finally chose to install Damn Small Linux. It runs well (and small :)) However:

- After APT has been enabled, and Debian sources have been configured (/etc/apt/sources.list), a apt-get upgrade does break everything (boot freeze with dozens of messages about some kind of "applet" having problems :unsure:). So only apt-get install is quite safe, but I'm bound to reach a limit one day with one package or another...

- Configuration is a bit "try and guess", as it is a mix of DSL scripts/Knoppix scripts/Debian scripts, so that some configuration files are used, others are not...

- After installation on disk, it still runs "as a LiveCD": lang is set on kernel append line, all is probed on startup (even /etc/fstab is ignored!).

 

So all in all, as the result is really damn small and fast, it *is* the perfect distribution I was looking for, for my laptop. With mdk, I did as much as possible in command-line, and when needed, I started a GUI session. Now with DSL, I start a GUI session on boot, and still have half my 32MB RAM free! and I hardly touch swap by starting a second GUI session or firefox!

 

Nevertheless, I intended to install DSL on my main PC next (PII 350 with 192MB RAM), but that won't happen. In this regard, I very much thank those who gave feedback about pure Debian, as this may be the solution if I do decide to change the distribution.

 

Yves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks steppenwolf1984!

 

I appreciate your feedback because I finally decided that DSL was not for me, as I have an issue with it: I can have either AltGr keys (~#{[|`\^@]}) or accentuated keys (éçàù...) working fine depending on the keymap I choose, but not both at the same time!

 

I'll wait for your report on Puppy, else I'll try plain Debian... but I'm wondering if I will gain anything compared to plain Mandrake, all the more because I also have an issue with Debian's Multicast DNS responder (mDNSresponder) not responding!

 

Yves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...