On 10 August 2013 17:21, Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 09:23:50PM +1000, Mark Trickett wrote:
I have managed to install Debian 7.1.0 on an Acer Travelmate 3230, even coping with the binary blobs during the install. It is generally working well, standalone, but now I am looking to sorting out and using now and then networked.
i spent about 8 months trying to get gnome 3 to a usable/useful state and ended up just giving up and switching to xfce. it does everything i want in a window manager, without fuss and without forcing an "experience" or, worse, a glorious vision on me.
I may need to remove a great deal and install a lighter desktop, the Notebook is maxed out with 1.5Gig of RAM.
IMO, that's definitely not enough for gnome3. IME it's barely enough for normal casual use if you're going to use a web browser. my little asus x401u laptop only has 2GB RAM and even running xfce, swapping delays are quite noticable if i'm running iceweasel or chromium.
I'm using iceweasel 17.0.7 in wheezy on the ancient systems I mentioned upthread, and I've never noticed my swap partition in use. I'm curious about the apparently different experience. Perhaps it is swapping and I've just never noticed? Would that info be logged anywhere?
for a minimal debian install, you have to be careful to install nothing but the base system (and maybe ssh) from the installer CD/USB/PXE/whatever.
de-select *everything* when d-i gets to the Task Selection stage.
then when you've booted into the new system, use apt-get to install only the things you know you'll need. you'll end up with a system that's still significantly larger than a tiny-distro like Damn Small Linux, but you'll have access to apt-get and the enormous library of packaged software.
I forgot to mention that is exactly the procedure I used installing my desktop and notebooks that I quoted the LXDE memory use in my previous message. So maybe I've avoided some bloat that way, also I always used 'aptitude -R' and installed only "recommended" packages that I actually need, otherwise they are installed by default (without -R).
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)
True here. But I'm not doing anything very cutting edge. Except heroically minimising e-waste going to landfill :) The last time I bought a new PC was in 1988 when I got a bank loan to buy an 80286! I don't think there were many second-hand PCs around back then :) I've been recycling ever since.