Arch Linux

clownfish

Member

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 72

Minimum Arch installation

Hi!
The short version of this question: which packages would "pacman -Sy openbox firefox thunderbird geany pidgin ipw2100" pull in if there aren't any packages installed yet (not even the basic arch installation)?

The long version:
I just want to use firefox, thunderbird, pidgin and geany and connect to the internet via WLAN (in this case with an ipw2100 device), and openbox to manage this stuff.
Which minimum arch installation would do the job? What is the absolute minimum of the base packages which have to be installed for a working x-server and the mentioned software?
Are there any other ways to minimize disk space used by the OS and the software?
I'm also prepared to remove files manually, said in other words: to mess around in the system just to reduce used disk space.

Is there a tutorial out there? Any suggestions? Has anybody tried this yet?

Maybe this is not the right sub-forum. But as the goal is, to end up with a working, ready-to-use, never-need-updates, closed workstation, I chose this.

Last edited by clownfish (2007-09-30 11:04:41)

harlekin

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-13

Posts: 408

Re: Minimum Arch installation

I think installing the base archlinux and pulling the rest in with pacman -Sy <packages> would give you a very minimal system with all the stuff you need.

You can even keep it clean, if you remove with pacman -Rns instead of pacman -R and check pacman -Qe from time to time.

Anyway, even the base group may pull in packages you don't need or want. So I suggest installing a base system and then checking the installed packages with pacman -Q. Here you can sort out what you don't need and remove it as long as no package you want, depends on it. Then proceed with updating and installing packages.

Last edited by harlekin (2007-09-30 11:22:01)

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Hail to the thief!

dienadel

Member

Registered: 2005-12-23

Posts: 179

Re: Minimum Arch installation

Hello,

Months ago (today perhaps is different), i made a few tests to know what are the minimal pkg's that must be selected during the install to start building a system. This "minimal arch" would have net, so pacman would work, and a file editor to configure the pre-system. Obviously, during the install, pacman resolves the dependencies, so, the installed pkgs number, is bigger.

I think that this may be improved, but, for me, this was enough:

filesystem
findutils
grub
gzip
initscripts
iputils
kbd (my keyboard is spanish)
kernel26
mkinitcpio
net-tools
pacman
sysvinit
vi

I've cable modem and router, so, i configured static IP. If not, i'd have installed dhcpd.

Bye

NOTE: Updated on 26 june 2008, listing the real pkg's i select on install (it works)

Last edited by dienadel (2008-06-26 05:53:54)

clownfish

Member

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 72

Re: Minimum Arch installation

@dienadel: that's an idea. i didn't have in mind that the arch-installer just runs pacman which would pull in the dependencies if i just select very few packages. i'll give it a try.

The actual intention of my idea is, to explore the limits of arch and GNU/Linux in general. I came up to this idea when i read, some time ago, that some guys created a very minimal installation of "Linux from Scratch" which just runs apache.
Sure, arch is not LFS. But maybe I was just inspired by another thread in this forums which brought up a discussion about how much users can learn with Arch about GNU/Linux.

The sense of this idea? Maybe it's nonsense. But I just did a fresh installation of Arch cause I shot the system. Now I run openbox, firefox, thunderbird, pidgin, geany, and very few applications which acutally didn't pull in many dependecies when I installed them. Now I take a look at the output of "df" in commandline: 2671048 KB used for the system, that's  / (root) without /home. Subtract the pacman cache and it's still over 2GB. Just WWW-browsing, writing emails and some coding needs 2GB?
Well, compared to Vista or even WinXP the 2GB are peanuts.
But just a second-hand-car dealer could convince me that 2GB of OS-data are really needed for just some WWW-apps and some coding.

Hmm...just some explanations for the reasons of this thread to avoid the thread to end in a flamewar cause anybody thinks I'm not satisfied with arch as it is.

Cheers and gn8

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: Minimum Arch installation

I can only input that my Arch router with some "redundant" packages takes ~1GB.