Arch Linux

Pyrthas

Member

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 6

[solvedish] How small can / be?

Suppose this is solved as well as it will be. Just experimented a bit and came up with something that seems to work well enough.

I haven't seen a really clear answer to this question (although I haven't had amazing luck searching the forums for it in the first place). Right now my main work computer is running DSL off of a 1gb dom. It works well enough, but I prefer Arch. I don't need much storage - work for me just means writing .tex files - so 1gb should be fine. (I guess I could spend the money and get a 2gb dom, but I'd rather not.)

I'm guessing that I can get by with 64mb for swap or something like that (I have 1gb ram and really shouldn't be using much in the first place), but I don't know how small I can make /. (Or if I should stick with the separate / and /home that auto-prepare gives me in the first place. Should I? What are the benefits of doing so?) Does it just have to be big enough for all the programs I need? The only packages I need are openssh, xterm, ratpoison, gv, tetex (tex is kind of fat, I know), and elinks, although I wouldn't mind having firefox, and naim/pebrot would be nice. Oh, and siag would be nice. Someone needs to make a siag package. Or, really, I need to learn how to make packages and make one. (That'll be the next free weekend I have.)

From everything I've read, Arch isn't really the best at staying small, but I'm pretty sure that I can fit everything with at least 100 or 200mb free for storage. I hope. But how should I partition my (not-really-a-)hdd? I'd be much obliged by any help. I'm loving arch on my laptop (although I haven't tried to get wireless working yet), and looking forward to getting it running on my work machine.

Last edited by Pyrthas (2007-03-16 00:21:07)

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: [solvedish] How small can / be?

siag is in community repo: pacman -S siag-office

Pyrthas

Member

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 6

Re: [solvedish] How small can / be?

Yeah, thanks, I found that (once I found the community repo), but it's the entire suite; I just need a spreadsheet. The thought of installing all those programs I don't need bugs me. But I might just be lazy and install that package the next time I need a spreadsheet. We'll see.

Thanks again.