[sf-lug] small Linux installations: Re: choices/defaults ...

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] choices/defaults: Re:  systemd 8-O ...
> Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2018 22:26:33 -0700

> and you _can_ install it, but it's horribly compromised by shoehorning
> it into a 48MB ISO file, and it doesn't even have reasonable package
> management.'
>
> Helpers:  'Because the user had only a 2.1GB hard drive.'
>
> RM:  'Excuse me?  That's gobs of room for Debian, Slackware, AntiX,
> Kanotix, and many more.  Heck, you can even do CentOS or Mandriva with
> that.  Over two gigs is a _lot_.'
>
> Helpers:  'We tried Debian, but it was going to require several
> gigabytes.'
>
> RM:  'Not if you install only what you actually need and want.  And also
> you should remove and disable processes you don't wish to run, if only
> to save wasteage of RAM.'

Yes, having quite recently done a Debian stall, doing a minimal
(deselecting all the package collections options in
"Software selection" in that screen of options in the default Debian
installer from the standard ISO images) ...
worked out to have quite small footprint ... I find it well under 700 MiB
of used drive space on the install (that was also after I'd ripped out
most all of systemd ... didn't check before, but likely fairly similar).
And after running an
# apt-get -y clean
it was down under 600 MiB!  Now, that might not be highly practical for a
more typical, even "small" distribution, but fitting it within 2 GiB of drive
space should be easy-peasy in most/many cases, and even under 1 GiB in
some/many.  Heck, for years, I had (still have it around somewhere) a
2 GiB microSD I'd use in a USB "reader", and had a Debian installation
that I would boot and run on that!  Worked great!  (Yes, I know, highly
non-ideal drive media/interface - but worked quite "well enough" for
my purposes).  I'd mostly use that in a work environment where they insisted
I have some other sucky operating system on the laptop drive, and wouldn't
let me change the drive to dual-boot, etc., and there was stuff I actually
needed to do ... often and especially when dealing with hardware in the
data center or doing some specific networking troubleshooting operations
(and serial port communications and break signals on serial lines ...)
that, well, sucky operating system just couldn't do it (at least with
what I could use on it).  But, thankfully, they were fine with me
booting the laptop off of other media and running stuff from there, so,
e.g. Knoppix on optical or USB, or ... my fairly tiny little Debian
installation I put within 2 GiB of storage and booted and ran via the
USB ... dang well did what I needed to do.  And solved/fixed data
center communication issues that absolutely nobody else on the entire
team at the company could resolve ... and, yeah, including production
issues <sigh>.

So, yep can fit quite a lot within 2GiB of storage.  Sure, not some huge
bloated desktop environment, but a nice healthy lean CLI with lots of
useful stuff, and with some reasonably careful selection, relevant
X11, window manager, and relevant utilities.