[conspire] Debian, yes we can go quite small, unlike ... and Ubuntu 20.04 &UEFI & not

Mon Nov 16 09:22:54 PST 2020

 Now I know why I was feeling dizzy during CABAL.  What I was seeing on the meeting screen looked just like the kubuntu install I just done.
Whatever distro, installs have gotten much easier than the long ago days of installfests.    I think I first met Rick at one in San Jose.  There was a LinuxWorld at Moscone Center.  I stopped at the booths for every distro and asked why they thought theirs was better.  Someone handed me a package and said, "Ours is easy to install.  Here try it for yourself."  I think it was SUSE with a green lizard as a mascot.   
Even that one required at least 3 CD's and had maybe 2 dozen different steps, starting with trying to guess the correct display parameters.   The 'buntu install had, I think, 5 steps.  First was select language, then select time zone.  Only the disk partition step was non-trivial.
For the past dozen years, I used Debian.  Over time, the basic OS became more stable, at least from this user's perspective.  We got past controversy over systemd.  What I did notice was the supported version of apps.  (We used to call them programs.)  Several that I used are available on both Linux and M$.  The debian version always seemed to be very slow in being updated.  
If we dig through the conspire email archives, there was one package I wanted that was not in the current Debian.  Apparently the developers were slow in fixing a compatibility issue with some hardware architecture and ...
Well this time I thought I would see if 'buntu did a better job of having more current versions of apps.   I actually made USB sticks for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu.   I also read reviews that suggested they require RAM of 4G, 2G, and 1G respectively.  I decided on Kubuntu, mostly because I liked the feel of the desktop.   BTW, I had been using LXDE previously, partly because it was consistent with the early Raspbian.  
As I said in previous email, my first attempt at install didn't work because the disk didn't have a EUFI partition.  So I started over.  Actually I did the install a couple of times,   The last time the partition step went like this.
Make EUFI partition of 10MB.      Installer said it needed to be at least 35MB.   Go back.  Make EUFI 35 MB and redefine all the other partitions.  Well the partition was rounded down to 34 MB.  Installer complained.  Redo partitions with EUFI of 40 MB, which became 37 MB actually.
My final partion table:fat32     /boot/efi        37MB       8.35MB usedext4      /                   140GB       18 GB usedext4      /home           18GB         6  GB used..and more big partitions to which I transferred 100GB of data files. 
I'm not sure what the bootloader actually does.  It was set to LEGACY, and I have not gone back to change the settings.  I turn on the PC and Kubuntu comes up.  Ain't broke.

    On Sunday, November 15, 2020, 02:17:31 AM PST, Michael Paoli <michael.paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:  

 So, CABAL today ...

I did poke about at an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS install (from
ubuntu-20.04-desktop-amd64.iso) ... was curious about if it "insisted"
upon UEFI install or not.  So, poked about it on a Virtual Machine.
Already had a VM set to just run it live from the ISO, no other drive.
I just used that as a basis and slightly modified it:
added 8 GiB drive (virtual)
enabled boot menu to select boot device,
set it to default to trying the virtual drive first, before optical.
Well first glitch - it didn't want to install to 8 GiB drive - said
that was too small.  Bumped it up to 10 GiB - it took that.
Did pretty much default install.  And yes, by default, it did UEFI.
After bit 'o poking at it, brought it down, wiped the virtual drive
(actually truncated it to 0 length, then brought the logical to
10 GiB again - sparse file), went through install again, but this time
I didn't go with default partitioning.  I set up first partition as
/boot (ext2), then I gave it a swap partition (2 GiB), then the remainder as
/ (root) filesystem (ext4).  And then installed like that ...
And it did a quite standard/legacy install, no UEFI.
Ubuntu also requires 2 GiB of RAM to install (it's possible, but
painful, to work around that - but one won't end up with a very
functional result).

So, ... I was kind'a curious, ... Debian, ... I already have a relatively
minimal Debian VM.  I was kind'a curious how small I could take it down
to ... and not even going "all the way", but mostly whacking away at
the non-required and such.
Well, before making it too painful for myself, ... down to ...
# cat /etc/debian_version; swapoff -a; free; df -h -x devtmpfs -x  
tmpfs; dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l
10.6
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache    
available
Mem:        131272      38396        3648        1420      89228    
    86068
Swap:            0          0          0
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1      1.4G  693M  626M  53% /
143
#
Disk could of course be reduced further, maybe even memory a wee bit further.
The VM has 157696 KiB of RAM.
And, quite trimmed down the packages ...
# cd $(mktemp -d)
# >a && rm * && { (for deb in $(dpkg -l | awk '{if($1=="ii")print  
$2;}'); do set -- $(apt-cache show "$deb" | sed -ne 's/^Priority:  
$..*$$/\1/p;s/^Essential: $..*$$/\1/p;/^$/q'); if [ "$#" -eq 1 ];  
then echo "$deb" >> "$1"; elif [ "$#" -eq 2 ] && [ "$1" == "yes" ];  
then echo "$deb" >> essential; echo "$deb" >> "$2"; fi; done); wc -l  
*; }
  23 essential
  21 important
  87 optional
  33 required
    2 standard
  166 total
# (for p in $(cat essential); do fgrep -lx "$p" [!e]*; done) | sort -u
required
#
// All that remain that are Essential: yes are also Priority: required
# (for f in required important standard optional; do echo "$f" $(cat  
"$f") | fold -s -w 72; done) | sed -e 's/  *$//'
required apt base-files base-passwd bash bsdutils coreutils dash
debconf debianutils diffutils dpkg e2fsprogs findutils grep gzip
hostname init-system-helpers libc-bin libpam-modules:amd64
libpam-modules-bin libpam-runtime login mawk mount ncurses-base
ncurses-bin passwd perl-base sed sysvinit-utils tar tzdata util-linux
important adduser cpio cron debian-archive-keyring fdisk gpgv ifupdown
init iproute2 iputils-ping kmod logrotate netbase procps
readline-common sensible-utils systemd systemd-sysv tasksel
tasksel-data udev
standard gettext-base ucf
optional dmsetup e2fslibs:amd64 firmware-linux-free gcc-8-base:amd64
grub-common grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common initramfs-tools
initramfs-tools-core klibc-utils libacl1:amd64 libapparmor1:amd64
libapt-pkg5.0:amd64 libargon2-1:amd64 libattr1:amd64 libaudit-common
libaudit1:amd64 libblkid1:amd64 libbz2-1.0:amd64 libc6:amd64
libcap-ng0:amd64 libcap2:amd64 libcap2-bin libcom-err2:amd64
libcryptsetup12:amd64 libdb5.3:amd64 libdebconfclient0:amd64
libdevmapper1.02.1:amd64 libefiboot1:amd64 libefivar1:amd64
libelf1:amd64 libext2fs2:amd64 libfdisk1:amd64 libffi6:amd64
libfreetype6:amd64 libfuse2:amd64 libgcc1:amd64 libgcrypt20:amd64
libgmp10:amd64 libgnutls30:amd64 libgpg-error0:amd64 libhogweed4:amd64
libidn11:amd64 libidn2-0:amd64 libip4tc0:amd64 libjson-c3:amd64
libklibc:amd64 libkmod2:amd64 liblocale-gettext-perl liblz4-1:amd64
liblzma5:amd64 libmnl0:amd64 libmount1:amd64 libncurses6:amd64
libncursesw6:amd64 libnettle6:amd64 libp11-kit0:amd64 libpam0g:amd64
libpcre3:amd64 libpng16-16:amd64 libpopt0:amd64 libprocps7:amd64
libseccomp2:amd64 libselinux1:amd64 libsemanage-common
libsemanage1:amd64 libsepol1:amd64 libsmartcols1:amd64 libss2:amd64
libssl1.1:amd64 libstdc++6:amd64 libsystemd0:amd64 libtasn1-6:amd64
libtinfo6:amd64 libudev1:amd64 libunistring2:amd64 libuuid1:amd64
libxtables12:amd64 libzstd1:amd64 linux-base
linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 linux-image-amd64 lsb-base nvi xxd
zlib1g:amd64
# cat /etc/debian_version; swapoff -a; free; df -h -x devtmpfs -x  
tmpfs; dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l
10.6
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache    
available
Mem:        131272      38396        3648        1420      89228    
    86068
Swap:            0          0          0
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1      1.4G  693M  626M  53% /
143
#

So, ... Debian ...
well under 700 MiB of drive space,
157696 KiB of RAM
143 packages.

Ubuntu ... >8 GiB minimum for disk
> ~=2 GiB minimum for RAM
packages ... around 1,421
# dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l; free; cat /etc/*{-release,_version}
1421
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache    
available
Mem:        2035432      451968      345136        7352    1238328    
  1414436
Swap:      1999868          0    1999868
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal
bullseye/sid
#

Yes, Debian - Universal Operating System ... over 59,000 ready-to-run
software packages ... but about 143 will do 'ya,
and 157696 KiB of RAM and about 700 MiB of drive to get 'ya started.

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