Heloo Tren, On Mon, 2013-08-12 at 12:38 +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
it's been a very long time since i tried to install debian on a system with only 256M...i'm not entirely sure it will work. it should *run* OK-is once it's installed but the installer may require more than 256M (the debian package list is *huge*)
Last time I tried it, IIRC with wheezy when it was testing, you can boot w/256M, but you can only install w/256M if the udebs are available on local media -- i.e. it doesn't need to dl them into memory first AND unpack them into memory.
Just installed 7.1.0 from DVD on a P4 1.6Ghz with 256Mb of RAM. Went well from the DVD, and went with the xfce desktop environment. No problems with boot or install, but did make choices at the initial boot for not full auto install. Had to choose more interactive options.
IMO, though, if 256MB isn't enough then a tiny-distro is still not the right solution, apt-get and friends are far too useful to discard - you can get P3s and better with 512M or 1GB or more for free without looking too hard. they're disposable "rubbish" that most people/businesses don't want (but still make perfectly good routers/firewalls and even desktop systems)
FTR, openwrt and friends have opkg. AIUI it's a de facto standard in the embedded space. It's not apt/dpkg, but it's not hand-rolling either.
And it installed Synaptic, not the Gnome alternative, and better behaved. There is also a difference with CUPS, could install printers without having to have a printer actually attached and turned on. The CUPS install printers on Gnome3 not proceeding now appears to be a Gnome issue rather than CUPS. Interesting. I am finding that xfce is a reasonable desktop, but missing bits I have become used to. It will take a bit of careful choosing what additional software to install, and how to configure. Being GTK+ based, I should be able to use some of the Gnome applications I am used to without pulling in too many libraries and the like. I will also look closely at Net-Manager. From reading, I should be able to tell it that certain interfaces are "unmanaged", ie manually configured. There is also the matter of converting the notebook to a lighter desktop. It would be good to be able to go back to the base, then add the different desktop. There is enough space on the hard drive, but not really enough to be that generous, There is a lot else I want to store there. As per prior comment, next will be some CD images, rather than the DVD, and see how matters go with 64Mb on a SMP P200 Pentium classic. It is not a high priority, much else happening, but will be quite interesting. I may also consider an earlier version, I have some on magazine DVDs in the collection, but that will require putting a PATA DVD drive in the place of the CD drive, and I think it is a relatively small drive at this time. I need to take another look at that box, forgotten some of the details. Regards, Mark Trickett