Light install: building up vs cutting down.

[Flemur]

FWIW, on principle I like a light installation in terms of disk space, boot time and "user experience" (no lags, please). I've found it's easier to start with a full install and cut down rather than a minimal install and build up, and they end up about the same.

All the below installs use fluxbox window manager, the Mints are Xfce based, the Manjaro is LXDE base, Ubuntu "minimal" has no graphic base.

Boot times are from "systemd-analyze";

All "/" include a very minimal /home (settings only), xorg, an nvidia driver, two kernels and the files required by 'wine', NO "office", but....

...the wine installation (/opt/wine-stable -> /mnt/DATA/wine-stable) and the wine "prefix" (~/.wine -> /mnt/DATA/wine32), firefox installation and ~/.mozilla are on another partition, which is the same for all the installations below.

Code: Select all

Mint 19.2:  "/" = 4.6G, boots in about 7 sec.
Mint 18.3:  "/" = 4.2G, boots in about 5+ sec.
Manjaro:    "/" = 4.8G, boots in about 5- sec. 
Ubun 18.04: "/" = 3.4G, boots in about 3+ sec.

The ubuntu install doesn't use a display manager, has one kernel (the others have two), has only one terminal (lx-) (the others have two or three) and one file manager (pcmanfm) (the others have two or three) and one taskbar (lx-), the others have two taskbars (occasionally opened to use the menu). Ubuntu is also missing whatever it is that detects inserted USB drives, which I actually prefer.

The Ubun install was quite usable with 2.6G, but adding wine dependencies, nvidia driver, synaptic + gimp (= a lot of dependencies!) and ??? made it more similar to the others for comparison....and not all that much smaller than the Mint installations. pcmanfm has it's own sort of "menu" display so don't need the lxpanel.

[Pjotr]

Building up is always better than cutting down. Golden rule.

[gm10]

If you want to build up towards Mint you can always do Ubuntu minimal, add a matching packages.linuxmint.com repo and then install mint-meta-xfce or the parts of it you want. Mint itself is obviously one of the heaviest distributions around.

Personally I know my time is more valuable than investing it into trying to save a little bit of storage space but we each have our own kinks.

[Hexeratops]

If you're installing to a system strapped for resources, building up is probably the best way to go. You can call the shot on all the packages you install and you can tweak all of them to be as efficient as possible. You also get an intimate knowledge of the system so you can fix things if stuff breaks. I like cutting down better when I'm just trying to get something simple up and running fast. You have all the system-level and integration components in place, so that's a fair bit you don't have to worry about

[Portreve]

I would second (or third?) the comments above that building up is the better approach. It will probably take a degree of experimentation to decide what works best in terms of components you choose to install, and one you get that list pretty well firmed up, you are generally good to go.

[DAMIEN1307]

I always build up since im custom making Linux systems for others with just what they want and need in mind...myself included...DAMIEN

[Portreve]

A particular example of "building up" is rooting your Android phone, starting out with something like LineageOS, then using the Aroma version of Opengapps, and then you can choose every single thing beyond the base OS install that you want, or go the reverse direction and tell it which specific bits to omit.

For my purposes, Linux Mint is my minimum base install. I don't speak for anyone else, but I don't derive any benefit in doing any more of a "bare metal" install of GNU+Linux because there's a lot of stuff I want and consider standard for a professional setup.

[absque fenestris]

In this VirtualBox I deleted GIMP, Thunderbird and LibreOffice - but added Evolution, Opera and Vivaldi.
5.1 GB at 18.2 GB disk space. It is Mint MATE 18.3.
For a nice complete system including applications!
5.1 GB...
Has anyone ever tried to install an Adobe CS-DVD on a 20 GB hard disk?

[Portreve]

The last version of Creative Suite I ever touched was 5.0. It was ok, but I preferred 3.0. I think the only software I really miss from those old days are QuarkXPress, InDesign, Keynote, Photoshop, and old crap from Classic Mac OS like Insanity and CrystalQuest.

If Scribus could be pretty much just like Quark, but with some of the finer, more artsy touches of InDesign, it would be the best overall desktop publishing program, period.

[absque fenestris]

The last version of Creative Suite I ever touched was 5.0. It was ok, but I preferred 3.0. I think the only software I really miss from those old days are QuarkXPress, InDesign, Keynote, Photoshop, and old crap from Classic Mac OS like Insanity and CrystalQuest.

If Scribus could be pretty much just like Quark, but with some of the finer, more artsy touches of InDesign, it would be the best overall desktop publishing program, period.

Hi Portreve
I think you've got the thread mixed up...

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=304975

[Portreve]

Hi Portreve
I think you've got the thread mixed up...

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=304975

Technically no, because I was responding to your reference to CS-DVD, but I take your point, and am glad you copied my comments over to that thread.