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A Newbie's Guide To A Lo-Fat Linux Desktop
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Dec 28, 2001 06:12 PM
from the lean-and-mean dept.
from the lean-and-mean dept.
A reader writes:"This article is what I needed a few years ago, when I first started playing with Linux. It's about building a fast and usable desktop using software that doesn't need a squillion horsepower." Good article if you are putting together an older machine to run as a dedicated box, or what to cobble together a terminal with spare parts.
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A Newbie's Guide To A Lo-Fat Linux Desktop
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lo-fat? (Score:4, Funny)
Blackbox vs Ice, and some comments on programs (Score:5, Informative)
Blackbox is great, but it has been out of development for a while. It is a bit NeXt-ish but super lightweight, and quite attractive. There is current development on the same codebase under "fluxbox". A few guys got tired of waiting for improvements, and just went for it. I love open source... I use fluxbox on my p133 laptop w/ 32 mb of ram, and it works great.
Icewm can be made to look more win32-ish. I have used it on and off, and think it is ok. It seems slower on my system than blackbox or fluxbox.
If you really want minimal, check wmx or aewm++. They are pretty cool, but do not have many features (by design).
For mail, try sylpheed or mutt. sylpheed is a nice gui mail client, mutt is console.
For news try pan, or slrn etc. I use pan exclusively now, as it is acceptably fast and has great features.
rxvt is blindingly fast, as an xterm replacement, and aterm is quick with cool features. i use aterm.
try Feh for images. It is lightweight and powerful. The montage feature is uber hip.
nedit is a good editor, as is kde's kate. Vim always runs quick.
Get mess and mame for games, they are lightweight and run a million old console or arcade roms.
Good luck to you,
Cuchullain
PS: management of your system becomes an issue with slow boxes, try debian with dselect. It seems to kick right along even on my slow boxes.
there are distros for this purpose (Score:4, Informative)
or, if you want a beautiful pure-UNIX box with unbeatable package management and outstanding security, install NetBSD (my favorite
Re:there are distros for this purpose (Score:5, Interesting)
But last time I checked installing apache under debian requires installing libmysql first (explain that one to me). Installing postfix requires installing sasl, ldap, pcre, and mysql libs. Try installing any of the courier suit in a "waist slim" state. Debian wants to install telnetd and inetd out-of-the-box and I can't remove netkit-inetd because netbase depends on it. Samba requires CUPS even though I don't own a printer. CUPS in turn makes me install tiff libraries. I need to install db2 for man and perl but I need db3 for postfix. Vim and links require I have gpm installed even though there is no mouse on the computer.
All this is on a relatively bare bones server. Debian is nice but "waist slim" it is not.
Re:Red Hat and the like are killing Linux (Score:5, Informative)
In the end, an rpm -qa, then an rpm -qi on each "questionable" package helps me to remove packages that don't sound/look after the install.
These distros aren't "killing Linux", they're just doing what they should be doing-- showing new users the wealth of open source and free software programs available with a wonderful free OS. If you don't like the extra crap, then feel free to not install it/deinstall it later.
I'd rather a newbie have more apps to play with, then him get a stripped-down Linux box with no 'fun' programs and having him ask where all the real software is. Linux could use more desktop market share, and more applications with a default install help to fuel that.
FVWM (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody actually use those silly little file managers? IMHO, they just get in the way - why not just use the command line?
Start with X? (Score:3, Interesting)
So when I installed linux (SuSE at first) I benefitted greatly from using just console for a short while (mostly because I couldn't setup X properly, but that's another thing). I learned how things worked in this new system before I encountered window managers that assumed I knew such things.
I certainly understand the need for lightweight WM's for some machines, but for learning purposes the only thing they can provide is maybe Netscape to help files. Of course imo someone should use the system they are comfortable with to browse help, because god knows the easiest way to get frustrated is having to fight with a machine while trying to find help.
Why no mention of APT? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll find a lot of this stuff is included on the installation cd's of most distro's, or you can follow the links. Wherever possible, these point to the project's homepage, or else to rpmfind's download site. If you're using something other than a RedHat style distro, you may have to backtrack a bit from the rpmfind sites to get the right version.
No offence, but fuck backtracking
Best of all, freshrpms.net is now available via APT. Freshrpms is an invaluable source of this kind of stuff - eg, if you're into DVD, its always up to date with the latest Ogle, Xine, Transcoder and Drip packages. Furthermore, Matthias from Freshrpms does requests: just name the software and he'll package it. He's also a bloody nice guy and writes tutorials on how to package properly too, asking for very little in return. Freshrpms is easily the best Red Hat package source out there.
Anyway, get APT here [rpmfind.net]. Install it, then stick the following in your
rpm http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-7.2-i386/redhat os
rpm http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-updates-7.2/redhat os
rpm http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-extra-7.2/redhat extra
rpm http://apt.freshrpms.net freshrpms/7.2 main
rpm-src http://apt.freshrpms.net freshrpms/7.2 main
rpm-src http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-7.2-i386/redhat os
rpm-src http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-updates-7.2/redhat os
rpm-src http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat-extra-7.2/redhat extra
As you probably know, Ximian Gnome including Red Carpet is available from ximian.com. Combined with APT they provide a way to run up to date software on a stable distribution using standard packages, which as far as I know isn't available from anyone but Connectiva, Red Hat, and Polished Linux Distribution.
Kernel (Score:4, Informative)
Zipslack would probaby be best for this base system. Or a stripped-dopy (minimal install) of Slack or Deb.
Dont want to start a flame war (Score:5, Informative)
In my opinon, you have to try as many UNIXs as you can. get an extra box. Install anything else on it than your normal install. play. repeat. There is more to computing than Linux. I just saw someone get modded down in another thread for mentioning Solaris. Solaris rocks. He got modded cause Solaris aint Linux.
You need the right tool for the right job. Square pegs dont fit in round holes, and so on. Once you do BSD, you will never go back. I have heard of people falling in love with Debian also. YMMV
erm ... some things are a little stupid ... (Score:4, Informative)
Now for older boxen ... the best way to make them efficient is to follow the Keep It Simple Silly method of making a working box. Win95-Lite was made for this exact reason ... but that's just if you want win95 ...
For linux I would have to recommend Slackware or Debian ... after a base install you have very little bloat and very few apps that you won't need. Apt makes it real nice to find and install, but slack also has a decent package list to choose from.
You may also want to look into the BSD's ... all of them have a very bland base install and all of them run the latest greatest stuff.
Along with being so great all of these (except slack) offer net installs, so all you need is a disk drive to boot the things up ... so if the CD has crapped out (which it has on many old computers) you can still do a full install on the net.
People are saying FVWM or other things like that ... SawFish and BlackBox were made to be VERY lightweight window managers and like windowmaker are very customizable and since they are so small ... they take up a very small memory foot print.
The thing would also make a cool Home Server, Make it into a router, webserver, email server, and file server ... perfect ...
Lastly ... you could set it up with a VNC client and use it that way as a terminal system. I think the one thing that needs to be realized is that old boxes are far from useless.
A few more suggestions (Score:5, Interesting)
Nedit lightweight ?? (Score:4, Informative)
Nedit is not bad, but a terminal based editor will KILL it for RAM usage. Like vi, or Microemacs, or joe, or even jed.
IceWM is OK, but blackbox is the screamer lightweight favorite Window Manager.
For a file manager use the command line. Or MC - another terminal based utility (GUI utilities chunk out 8-10 MB RAM just for playing).
For graphics viewing, skip ee. Raster is cool and all, but his imlib1.0 sucked for RAM usage. Try imlib2 and ee2, or eog. Either minimzes RAM usage while viewing images. GQview is pretty good, too.
All browsers blow chunks for using RAM, especially konqueror and mozilla. Opera is the clear lo-fat winna. Or lynx, or w3m.
And work on X - hard. Make a beautiful image your desktop background, and give up 20-30 Megs of RAM. Change it to a flat color (xsetroot -solid black) and you gain a lot back. Change X to 16 bit, and/or lose some resolution and you will gain more. I guess it all depends on what compromises you are willing to make. You can always hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 and save even more.
Video players, fm and word processing (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks to avifile author we have many free and powerfull players today. Please try mplayer [sf.net] and avifile [sf.net] if you don't know it.
How xanim or binary-only mtv can be better than free alternatives? Last time I checked it was even impossible to rewind a movie there!
XWC as fm? Well, ok, but I preffer emelfm [sf.net], which is much better than mc for me (try to use mc in directory with 10000 files!).
Last but not least - word processing. What about LyX [lyx.org]? OK, there is kword and abiword, but there are fat. IMHO LyX is much more powerfull than real MS Word, and it's fast and light. The only problem with LyX is xforms
So - it's nice to see that kind of article, but I think choices are not best there.
Linux From Scratch (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Linux From Scratch (Score:4, Informative)
More usable, and still just as light (Score:4, Interesting)
And whatever you do, DON't run KDE apps!
best distro for this (Score:5, Informative)
Linux from Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]
Now if someone can tell me why programs (so far MAKEDEV and Lilo) won't run from
harddrive
most lightweight graphcial web-browser? (Score:3, Interesting)
ok, there's always lynx and w3m for lightweight web-browsing
but my question is - what is th most lightweight, free software graphical web-browser out there? - nothing fancy, just functional please
My way... (Score:5, Informative)
- ROX-Filer for the file manager. It manages desktop icons, and has a panel as well if you want one. It's based on Gtk+, but doens't involove any gnome.
- Oroborus for the window manager. It's default theme is beautiful and it is amazingly quick. Uses only xlib for drawing.
- FSPanel, for F*ing Small Panel. The whole app is only 10k under linux! Plus it works and includes a pager (optional patch).
On my box it takes about 2 seconds to fully load everything! how's that for performance. KDE 2.1.0 took close to a minute to load.rox.sf.net [sf.net]
www.kensden.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Oroborus/ [blueyonder.co.uk]
www.chatjunkies.org/fspanel/ [chatjunkies.org]
Is it me or is this article not exactly useful? (Score:3, Interesting)
"use GIMP for image editing"? Thanks guys, would never have thought of that one. Better yet: "install KDE even if you don';t use it as the apps are good"
Look, I found in the back of my dead machine closet an old 386 laptop (woo, way back) and I want to set it up for my brother to encourage him to not email me instead of not calling, so I need a really low-fat linux. Whats the advice there? No PCMCIA or CD-ROM and about 4Mb of RAM, so KDE is out. Suspect X might be too. I'm going to try debian via floppy and fake a PPP connection via COM1 into my LAN for apt-get goodness.
Also, since when have newbies needed guides to setting up unusual configs? I'm an experienced systems engineer, I run a laptop thats well documented, whose manufacturer puts millions into Linux, and happens to be a model Alan Cox personally owns. Despite all this, I can't get the fecking sound card to work. (It works now, because I wanted to listen to MP3 using it pver the holidays, so I uninstalled Linux and put Win2K on it, which detects and configures and makes work all the hardware out of the box) You have more problems than "newbies can't work out which window manager to put KDE on top of to save on space", people.
That's it, from now on I'm drinking decaf.
I'm happy living in the past (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, on my latest desktop machines, I still use the same setup (although on a newer version of Linux). I had to copy over my old startup files to get the newer RedHat to fire up a desktop that looks like what I was used to. I also use this on a couple of 486's I have.
With this setup, I get multiple screens if I want, a very thin title bar at the bottom (so it doesn't take up much real estate, very important to me), and I have programmed various function key combinations to warp to (and bring to the foreground) the various windows I use:
The sysadmin in my dept laughed when I told him about all that, but a few days later he told me he'd done the same thing, mapping a zillion function keys. Once you use them a bit and remember them, it's so much faster than the mouse (and he probably has about as much aversion to the mouse as I do).
I tried to do all this function key mapping under Gnome a year or two ago, but couldn't figure out how to do it, so I gave up on it. Anyway, the stuff I do works fine under fvwm2 / Another Level, so there's nothing driving me to switch.
xwc seems to have disapeared (Score:3)
I normally don't care for such a thing. I get along fine with mv, bash/zsh's advanced replacements (for file in *.fred; do mv $file ${file%.fred}.barney; done), and a little perl script I cooked up to do regexp renaming (remv [turbogeek.org]). But occasionally a certain file management task comes along that leaves me begging for explorer.exe, and its in place edit, and its quick multifile selection that doesn't choke on quotes and spaces.
Anything out there for me?
very on-topic! (Score:3, Interesting)
First thing I did was clear some room and d/l some floppy images and install debian ( for the first time! )
Anyway, i'm used to kde. so I apt-get kde. When i boot into it UGH! it's slower than any computer i've ever used before!
The big problem is the hard disk. I would wager it's slower than that of most 386's. It's CRAP. If the swap fills up more than 10MB that's it. it immediately begins to crawl slower than a slug over the salt plains.
I had to apt-get blackbox and give that a go. It worked a charm. But, still a little disheartened by konqueror, which as it turns out, is more ram hungry than IE5, I decided to find another web browser. I found Dillo! Dillo is awesome. It's got some problems rendering and doesnt support any advanced features, but what do you want for 97k? I've been using it ever since. Even with several windows open it doesn't even touch swap!
I also found that gtk programs like gaim are much less resource intensive than their kde equivalents.
on a side note. Debian is awesome. My jaw dropped when i started using apt-get. Also, the distro seems very well put together. I love the little touches like the menu program which controls menus in all the WMs and DEs. Just using debian on this laptop has already made me vow to switch away from mandrake when i get back to my normal box. It's very weird that a distribution put together by volunteers has turned out to be my favourite, I've tried many others before sticking with mandrake because it's what i give out to my friends.
Another side note. Although i hate windows, win95 actually runs quite well on this machine. It's crap but it's lean i guess.
stick with plain X11 and screen-oriented pgms (Score:4, Informative)
If you want some graphics and multiple windows, X11 is actually not that heavy-weight, although Gnome and KDE are. Consider running plain X11 with "twm", "fvwm", or Oroborus [blueyonder.co.uk]. Of those, "twm" is ubiquitous, while oroborus is a little more modern. For minimal graphical web browsing, consider the "dillo" web browser, although it won't work on complex sites. You could also download Opera [operasoft.com], although it's commercial.
Ratpoison (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a snippet of info from top(1) after I tried running a few of the "lightweight" window managers mentioned here (btw, thanks to whoever mentioned fluxbox, looks good):
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE S %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
26154 pete 10 0 3076 3076 1872 S 0.0 0.5 0:01 sawfish
26009 pete 9 0 1872 1872 1332 S 0.0 0.3 0:00 fluxbox
26124 pete 11 0 1816 1816 1260 S 0.0 0.3 0:00 icewm
26059 pete 9 0 1648 1648 1192 S 0.0 0.3 0:00 blackbox
26094 pete 10 0 1528 1528 1012 S 0.0 0.2 0:01 fvwm2
20798 pete 9 0 944 944 808 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 ratpoison
Sorry if that's not terribly readable, but the important figures are SIZE, RSS and SHARE. Note that fvwm2, interestingly enough, appears even slimmer than blackbox (probably partly due to blackbox being written in C++). And, of course, note that ratpoison is significantly slimmer than any of them.
Of course, you may not be the sort of person that would appreciate ratpoison :) - but if you've
used screen(1) and like that, there's a good
chance you'll be able to absorb the ratpoison zen.
If you're the sort of person for whom screen real estate is all-important and you tend to use mainly terminals and a few browser windows, then give it a go - it combines extreme minimalism with useful functionality in a very nice way. No bullshit to get in your way.
Plus, it's the only WM I've ever used that I haven't had to configure at all before being productive with it... of course, that could be partly because there's very little about it to configure... :-)
Pete.
Re:What's wrong with DOS? (Score:3, Flamebait)
What's wrong with DOS?
I think I could give you a much shorter response by listing what's right with DOS:
Re:okay... (Score:4, Funny)
Real me use cheerios and like it. No frills, but you get a nutritious breakfast.