contemplating moving to linux

iphitus · 2009-02-15 06:20:25

anti-destin wrote:

/boot: 30mb

Boot partition isn't really essential.

swap: 512mb (i have 2gb ram)
/var: 1024mb

Leave a few gig for var, as pacman downloads updates there. How much you need will depend on how often you update or clean out updates.

/home: 1024mb
/: the rest

Other way around. About 6-10gb for /, and the rest for /home.

Most people keep their music, documents, videos, work, etc in /home, so it's a good idea to leave the majority to home rather than /.

Last edited by iphitus (2009-02-15 08:47:37)

Inxsible · 2009-02-15 06:22:00

iphitus wrote:

Other way around. About 6-10gb for /, and the rest for /home.
Most people keep their music, documents, videos, work, etc in /home, so it's a good idea to leave the majority to home rather than /.

iphitus, the OP unfortunately only has 5GB in total.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-15 06:25:20)

anti-destin · 2009-02-15 06:28:45

adamlau wrote:

Tough one, anti-destin. I also use an nLited XP install weighing in at 146 MB with everything slipstreamed in. For those of you unfamiliar with running nLited XP, it can be blazing fast. Not quite NT, but very responsive. You can redirect application files to wherever you want in Linux. Symlinks and compile time options are they keys. I do not worry about minimal size installs, but maximum speed of execution installations. And while an extremely stripped and nLited XP is speedier than most people think, a well done Arch setup is right there with it, if not faster. Even an nLited XP loads a number of unrequired background services (most of mine are disabled) and libraries, consuming system resources that could best be served by foreground applications. I would much rather my OS focus on maximizing the use of resources and give me greater granular control over application and their installation destinations through a robust package management system.

there's my predicament. my nlited xp is incredibly fast, and that's because i've removed as much as i could, i've replaced some system files with my customized ones (they're often smaller than the default ones), and i've tweaked the os significantly. i'm hoping arch is even faster than my xp; otherwise, it defeats the purpose of switching.

Inxsible wrote:

Seems good....but a quick question -- you have 2gigs of RAM and only 5Gigs of HDD ? or do you mean you have assigned only 5Gigs for linux?
1024 MB of /var is too less if you plan to retain the packages in /var. But if you flush your packages after every install then it should be ok. Retaining the packages has 1 obvious advantage that if a newer package screws up your system for some reason, you can always revert back to the old one. But this is a moot point if you only have 5GB to work with.

i don't plan on retaining the packages. also, i probably won't be installing too many programs, anyway. the fewer, the better.

the 5gb is the size of my c:\, which is more than enough for xp. i currently have 3.68gb free. ideally, i'd like to fit arch into this 5gb partition.

adamlau · 2009-02-15 06:51:18

I used to be in the same boat as you, anti-destin (only I insist upon 10-15K drives with ample drive space ) . My nLited XP was seriously tweaked (all compressed DLLs expanded), stable and secure. I had barely anything running in the background and followed NSA hardening techniques. I continue to run nLited XP installs within VMware to support CAD applications, but that is about it. Arch is simply more fun and exciting and holds more promise for improvements in resource management, speed and stabilityin the future. Ever use the tools from the Extreme Power Tools (Radsoft) toolkit? Takes an nLited XP install to the next level . I also use the ACP (Rixstep) toolkit for Mac OS X. Takes it to the next level as well .

Last edited by adamlau (2009-02-15 06:53:53)

iphitus · 2009-02-15 08:49:04

Oh, if it's 5gb, don't split it at all otherwise you'll probably run into trouble with space later on.

lucke · 2009-02-15 09:14:05

Compressing the FS can be a nice space saver and arguably a performance booster, but only ill-fated Reiser4 and still unstable Btrfs support that in the Linux world.

R00KIE · 2009-02-15 13:10:58

Maybe I would divide it as
2 ~ 2.5G /
512M swap (if you dont have much ram otherwise just forget swap)
rest /home

Its going to be a tight fit though and you cant keep packages in cache otherwise its a no go. I have an 8G flash disk with arch with everything I need (firefox, OOo the whole lot) and here's how it is split and the space used

df -h /dev/sdb?
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1             4.0G  2.7G  1.2G  70% /media/root_part
/dev/sdb2             3.5G  2.5G  784M  77% /media/home_part

Last edited by R00KIE (2009-02-15 13:12:45)

anti-destin · 2009-02-15 18:25:22

adamlau wrote:

I used to be in the same boat as you, anti-destin (only I insist upon 10-15K drives with ample drive space ) . My nLited XP was seriously tweaked (all compressed DLLs expanded), stable and secure. I had barely anything running in the background and followed NSA hardening techniques. I continue to run nLited XP installs within VMware to support CAD applications, but that is about it. Arch is simply more fun and exciting and holds more promise for improvements in resource management, speed and stabilityin the future. Ever use the tools from the Extreme Power Tools (Radsoft) toolkit? Takes an nLited XP install to the next level . I also use the ACP (Rixstep) toolkit for Mac OS X. Takes it to the next level as well .

i've never used extreme power tools, as i try to minimize the number of applications on my machine. is it just a tweaking program? i do all my tweaks manually.

but is there a reason why you switched from xp to arch?

iphitus wrote:

Oh, if it's 5gb, don't split it at all otherwise you'll probably run into trouble with space later on.

i may just have separate /home and swap partitions. that's probably the most appropriate partition scheme.

R00KIE wrote:

Maybe I would divide it as
2 ~ 2.5G /
512M swap (if you dont have much ram otherwise just forget swap)
rest /home
Its going to be a tight fit though and you cant keep packages in cache otherwise its a no go. I have an 8G flash disk with arch with everything I need (firefox, OOo the whole lot) and here's how it is split and the space used
df -h /dev/sdb?
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1             4.0G  2.7G  1.2G  70% /media/root_part
/dev/sdb2             3.5G  2.5G  784M  77% /media/home_part

that sounds about right to me. i'll start off with that.

another question about applications: i've learned that, when i uninstall packages, i can use some special command to remove everything. are uninstallations cleaner than they are on windows?

lastly, can anyone comment on my second question about which packages are required for an absolutely minimal installation? or should i just remove them afterward?

Inxsible · 2009-02-15 18:57:35

anti-destin wrote:

that sounds about right to me. i'll start off with that.
another question about applications: i've learned that, when i uninstall packages, i can use some special command to remove everything. are uninstallations cleaner than they are on windows?
lastly, can anyone comment on my second question about which packages are required for an absolutely minimal installation? or should i just remove them afterward?

If you use

pacman -Rns [i]<package-name>[/i]

It will remove all files related to the application. Note however that all user files and files that are created after the installation will not be removed. That you will have to do manually.

about the packages needed for a minimal install
1) kernel - obviously
2) network related packages
3) wireless related
There are a few others ..but when you use the Iso CD, it has a base and you need to install some packages in the base and that will give you a basic linux system.

After that you need to install X - if you want a GUI - you can also choose to not install a couple of packages from the xorg group. for eg. I didnt install xterm and the twm
a terminal app like urxvt, xterm, aterm, eterm
a window manager
any other apps that you might need

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-15 19:40:16)

R00KIE · 2009-02-15 19:22:42

I would try installing arch without selecting anything on base-devel (unless you see you are going to need it), then install the programs I need, if you need any dependency it will be fetched.
As for the rest, it has been said above

anti-destin · 2009-02-15 20:51:13

Inxsible wrote:

about the packages needed for a minimal install
1) kernel - obviously
2) network related packages
3) wireless related
There are a few others ..but when you use the Iso CD, it has a base and you need to install some packages in the base and that will give you a basic linux system.

which ones are the networking packages? do i need anything else for wireless besides 'wireless-tools'?

you said i need to install some packages in the base, but rookie says not to select anything unless i need it. are most of the packages safe to ignore?

After that you need to install X - if you want a GUI - you can also choose to not install a couple of packages from the xorg group. for eg. I didnt install xterm and the twm

how do i exclude xterm and twm? those always seem to be installed automatically whenever i install x.

R00KIE wrote:

I would try installing arch without selecting anything on base-devel (unless you see you are going to need it), then install the programs I need, if you need any dependency it will be fetched.
As for the rest, it has been said above

thanks. i'll give it a shot.

Honken · 2009-02-15 21:25:57

anti-destin wrote:

how do i exclude xterm and twm? those always seem to be installed automatically whenever i install x.

You do that by typing a # pacman -Sy xorg , then it'll ask you if you want to install the whole group, answer n and it'll let you choose which packages to install.

Edit: You'll probably want most of the packages in the Xorg group.

Last edited by Honken (2009-02-15 21:27:05)

Inxsible · 2009-02-15 21:45:05

Some packages in the base include sudo, wireless_tools etc. Those are the ones that you will need anyway...so if you choose not to install those during Arch installation, you will eventually have to install them using pacman. Normally I install nano, sudo, wireless_tools(on a laptop), iptables (sorry I don't rbr the entire list) -- but you get the idea.

I didn't install xterm - because I wanted to use urxvt - so no point keeping two terminal emulators. TWM is a very basic barebones window manager. I never use it...so I didn't install it.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-15 21:46:31)

adamlau · 2009-02-15 23:25:52

I find xterm useful to keep around when rebuild new, or current versions of urxvt. Not neccesary, but it allows me to make changes within my current X client.

anti-destin: Extreme Power Tools is a set of featherweight apps, including a file manager, a collection of text editors, a GUI sed tool, security tools, IP cacher, tray app and more. Nothing is over 10 KB in size. That is correct, 10 KB. It is a successful porting of useful Linux tools to the Windows environment, really slick and hardcore and used by the tweakiest of minimalist XP tweakers, including myself .

Why did I move from an nLited XP to Linux? Because my first love was FreeBSD and because I want to understand as much as I can about everything. I also run Mac OS X (thanks to my wife) on two boxes and so am in a position to compare and contrast the big four of BSD, Linux, Windows and Mac as it pertains to desktop use. All great, all have their purpose, all fast when done right. Like many others here, I have tried dozens of distros over the years. Arch really is one of the faster ones. The key is to compile as many kernel and userland apps as you can to keep the number of installed depencencies down.

Last edited by adamlau (2009-02-15 23:37:29)

Arch Linux

#26 2009-02-15 06:20:25

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#27 2009-02-15 06:22:00

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#28 2009-02-15 06:28:45

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#29 2009-02-15 06:51:18

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#30 2009-02-15 08:49:04

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#31 2009-02-15 09:14:05

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#32 2009-02-15 13:10:58

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#33 2009-02-15 18:25:22

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#34 2009-02-15 18:57:35

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#35 2009-02-15 19:22:42

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#36 2009-02-15 20:51:13

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#37 2009-02-15 21:25:57

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#38 2009-02-15 21:45:05

Re: contemplating moving to linux

#39 2009-02-15 23:25:52

Re: contemplating moving to linux

Board footer