I have an old Thinkpad 600E which has a P-II 300 CPU, a 10GB HD and
about 290MB RAM which doesn't really have enough horsepower to run
Windows.

Wandering through the bookstore this weekend, I found a book on DSL
"Damn Small Linux". It looked interesting, but the released version
doesn't seem to have WPA support for my Proxim/Orinoco WiFi card.

I use SLES 10 at work and have an OpenSuse 11.0 system running at
home, so I'd like to stick with OpenSuse and install a system
on my little laptop.

My naive approach is to simply install from the 11.0 DVD and then just
remove all the default stuff that I don't really want.

I don't see any obvious harm in this approach, other than being a
little time consuming.

Any pitfalls I'm overlooking?

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

Bert Hyman wrote:
> Wandering through the bookstore this weekend, I found a book on DSL
> "Damn Small Linux". It looked interesting, but the released version
> doesn't seem to have WPA support for my Proxim/Orinoco WiFi card.

A book? Could be an older version. Download the latest version.

> I don't see any obvious harm in this approach, other than being a
> little time consuming.

Why not start with 'minimal install' and then add whatever you want.
Instead of KDE or GNOME go completely CLI or use something like
Windowmaker or IceWM. That will be MUCH faster and about just as
usefull if not much, much better then the .
Where you can select KDE or GNOME you can also select something like
"advanced" where you can have more options.

> Any pitfalls I'm overlooking?

Perhaps you need to install in CLI. As long as the install starts, all
should be well.

houghi
--
If God doesn't destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and
Gomorrah an apology.

houghi@houghi.org.invalid (houghi) wrote in
news:slrngaln4t.kn8.houghi@penne.houghi:

> Bert Hyman wrote:
>> Wandering through the bookstore this weekend, I found a book on DSL
>> "Damn Small Linux". It looked interesting, but the released version
>> doesn't seem to have WPA support for my Proxim/Orinoco WiFi card.
>
> A book? Could be an older version. Download the latest version.

I did; I wasn't about to pay $40 for a book that just told me the
obvious :-)

Thanks for the other suggestions though.

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

Bert Hyman wrote:
>I have an old Thinkpad 600E which has a P-II 300 CPU, a 10GB HD and
>about 290MB RAM which doesn't really have enough horsepower to run
>Windows.

>Wandering through the bookstore this weekend, I found a book on DSL
>"Damn Small Linux". It looked interesting, but the released version
>doesn't seem to have WPA support for my Proxim/Orinoco WiFi card.

>I use SLES 10 at work and have an OpenSuse 11.0 system running at
>home, so I'd like to stick with OpenSuse and install a system
>on my little laptop.

>My naive approach is to simply install from the 11.0 DVD and then just
>remove all the default stuff that I don't really want.

>I don't see any obvious harm in this approach, other than being a
>little time consuming.

>Any pitfalls I'm overlooking?

Why not run the LiveCD and see if the needed drivers are present?

--
--- Paul J. Gans

gans@panix.com (Paul J Gans) wrote in
news:g8etob$e79$8@reader1.panix.com:

> Why not run the LiveCD and see if the needed drivers are present?

I've done that, so I know it will run.

I'm just looking for the quickest way to get a minimal system up and
running.

The DVD drive is only 2X, so I don't want to spend a lot of time
loading things I'll just remove later.

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

On 2008-08-19, Bert Hyman wrote:

> I have an old Thinkpad 600E which has a P-II 300 CPU, a 10GB HD and
> about 290MB RAM which doesn't really have enough horsepower to run
> Windows.



> My naive approach is to simply install from the 11.0 DVD and then just
> remove all the default stuff that I don't really want.
>
> I don't see any obvious harm in this approach, other than being a
> little time consuming.
>
> Any pitfalls I'm overlooking?

Does the 600E have a DVD drive ?
It might be CD only, in which case, you'll need to run the net install.

Other than the system installing and starting a bit slower, I don't see any
real objection to using 11.0.



--
The sand remembers once there was beach and sunshine
but chip is warm too
-- haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6

Rikishi 42 wrote:
> Does the 600E have a DVD drive ?
> It might be CD only, in which case, you'll need to run the net install.

You could make your own CD or perhaps even make a bootable USB stick and
use that. You would need an existing 11.0 to make those and I have not
tried it lately.

houghi
--
If God doesn't destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and
Gomorrah an apology.

In news:30crn5-2qu.ln1@whisper.very.softly Rikishi 42
wrote:

> Does the 600E have a DVD drive ?

Not all do, but mine does, in the "UltraSlimBay". It's a snappy 2X
reader.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

> The DVD drive is only 2X, so I don't want to spend a lot of time
> loading things I'll just remove later.

during installation there is a step (all on one page) where the
installer 'looks' at your system, hard drive, keyboard, etc and
"suggests" an install partitioning scheme....SOMEWHERE on that page
is a software section...where, if you click the right buttons you can
click to NOT install those things you do not need....like surely you
don't need any of the games :-)

and, though i love it you could skip OpenOffice in favor of (for
example) gnucalc (or somthing like that) and a lighter word
processor...or, none at all if you just need a email/nntp/browser
appliance...

for sure with a 300 mHz machine you are gonna need a lot of LIGHT
stuff...and, you already know that 10 GB is awfully small for
system/swap AND /home files...

good luck,

DenverD

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:14:09 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:
> I don't want to spend a lot of time loading things I'll
> just remove later.

Although it may be heretical to suggest such a thing in this particular
newsgroup, what you could do to avoid this is to install Debian on this
particular machine.

The reason for this is because in a Debian installation one can first
install a minimal working system (without an X11 windowing system),
then once that is up and running, then install all the extras, according
to your choice, be it icewm, or fluxbox, or other low weight window
managers, and then any other extras you so desire.

The other alternative would be to look at distributions which are
geared towards less powerful machines eg Puppy linux, or perhaps
something such as Arch linux or Frugalware.

Take a look at the various distributions and their features at



to decide which best meets your needs.

miller@yoyo.ORG (J G Miller) wrote in news:1219239189_8665@vo.lu:

> On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:14:09 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:
> > I don't want to spend a lot of time loading things I'll
> > just remove later.
>
> Although it may be heretical to suggest such a thing in this
> particular newsgroup, what you could do to avoid this is to install
> Debian on this particular machine.

I was thinking of OpenSuse mainly because I use SLES at work and
already have an OpenSuse 11.0 system running on a "real" box at home.
I'm getting too old to learn the ins and outs of yet another OS :-)

If I was to wander away, I'd actually be inclined to look at FreeBSD
again; I have an antique FreeBSD system (FreeBSD 4.4) at work that's
been running a news server for years. It's built out of an old HP
Vectra which has a P-II 400 and 256MB RAM.

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:51:29 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:
> I'm getting too old to learn the ins and outs of yet another OS :-)
Debian runs on the GNU/Linux **OS** as does openSuSe and SLES, so you
would not have to learn yet another operating system.

> If I was to wander away, I'd actually be inclined to look at FreeBSD
> again; I have an antique FreeBSD system (FreeBSD 4.4) at work that's
> been running a news server for years.

Yes, I forgot to mention that one of the BSD flavors is another
possibility, but I am not familiar with how they run on lower
specification machines.

To get the best performance out of your lower performance machine, the
best OS to install would be Gentoo, (new version for 2008 just released
last month) for which you compile the packages on the machine its-self,
but the drawback of that is, obviously, the lower the specification of
the machine, the longer it takes to build the packages.

J G Miller wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:51:29 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:
>> I'm getting too old to learn the ins and outs of yet another OS :-)
> Debian runs on the GNU/Linux **OS** as does openSuSe and SLES, so you
> would not have to learn yet another operating system.

Many of the essential tools ARE so different that it might be easier to
learn a new OS, because then you know it will be different.

> To get the best performance out of your lower performance machine, the
> best OS to install would be Gentoo, (new version for 2008 just released
> last month) for which you compile the packages on the machine its-self,
> but the drawback of that is, obviously, the lower the specification of
> the machine, the longer it takes to build the packages.

Then best for a small machine was already mentioned: Damn Small Linux.
And I also asume he wants to use it this decade. ;-)

houghi
--
I do not want life insurance.
I want all people to be genuinely grieving when I die.

houghi

J G Miller writes:

>On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:14:09 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:
> > I don't want to spend a lot of time loading things I'll
> > just remove later.

Depends on what your time is worth. You will spend far less time removing
than you would deciding which programs to install, and discovering in 3
weeks that 10 programs you really need are not installed, etc. Disk space
is cheap. So what if you disk has an extra 2GB of junk on it. It does not
do anything except take up space. It does not make your system faster to
not have that stuff on the hard disk.


>Although it may be heretical to suggest such a thing in this particular
>newsgroup, what you could do to avoid this is to install Debian on this
>particular machine.

>The reason for this is because in a Debian installation one can first
>install a minimal working system (without an X11 windowing system),
>then once that is up and running, then install all the extras, according
>to your choice, be it icewm, or fluxbox, or other low weight window
>managers, and then any other extras you so desire.

Yes, you can make a full time occupation out of it.


>The other alternative would be to look at distributions which are
>geared towards less powerful machines eg Puppy linux, or perhaps
>something such as Arch linux or Frugalware.

>Take a look at the various distributions and their features at

>

>to decide which best meets your needs.

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:18:16 +0200, houghi wrote:
> Many of the essential tools ARE so different that it might
> be easier to learn a new OS, because then you know it will be
> different.

Essential tools such as mount, fsck, vi (or nano), all generally being
GNU software are pretty much the same on the various distributions.

Essential tools do not come in the form of a desktop widget library
dependent GUI.

Granted the package management system IS the biggest difference between
distributions, but what is so different between

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install package_name

or smart update

etc etc

> And I also asume he wants to use it this decade. ;-)

Hence why I mentioned Puppy linux and did not mention Gentoo in
my first posting, *only* adding Gentoo as an afterthought for the best
possible performance.

As I said, the best approach is to consult the distributions listed at
DistroWatch and decide on the distribution which best fits one's needs.

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:37:55 +0000, Unruh wrote:
> Disk space is cheap. So what if you disk has an extra
> 2GB of junk on it. It does not do anything except take up space.

Are you recommending that the original poster replace the 10GB disk
in their laptop?

Bert Hyman wrote:

> gans@panix.com (Paul J Gans) wrote in
> news:g8etob$e79$8@reader1.panix.com:
>
>> Why not run the LiveCD and see if the needed drivers are present?
>
> I've done that, so I know it will run.
>
> I'm just looking for the quickest way to get a minimal system up and
> running.
>
> The DVD drive is only 2X, so I don't want to spend a lot of time
> loading things I'll just remove later.
>


The quickest way is possible when you have a local distro database at home.
I've done such a stunt, installing MDV 2008.0 on a Tosh 1670 from the
install CDs and an USB HDD containing the whole MDV repo files on it... A
worth 80 GB of packages from the different repos with updates from the day!

If you check the option to choose the packages to install, you'll not have
to uninstall anything later...

Ciao @+

F8BOE wrote:
>> The DVD drive is only 2X, so I don't want to spend a lot of time
>> loading things I'll just remove later.
>
> The quickest way is possible when you have a local distro database at home.
> I've done such a stunt, installing MDV 2008.0 on a Tosh 1670 from the
> install CDs and an USB HDD containing the whole MDV repo files on it... A
> worth 80 GB of packages from the different repos with updates from the day!

If USB is an option, that is. If it is an option, then perhaps it would
be possible to mae an installable USB key. No idea.

Alo possible (if you have a decent internet connection) is to use the
network CD and then use the minimal install, allthough 2x might still be
faster. :-D

You can also use the network CD, do the boot and put the DVD in your
network and install from there.

Or ...

So many options, so little time. :-D

houghi
--
I do not want life insurance.
I want all people to be genuinely grieving when I die.

houghi

Bert Hyman schreef:

> My naive approach is to simply install from the 11.0 DVD and then just
> remove all the default stuff that I don't really want.
>
> I don't see any obvious harm in this approach, other than being a
> little time consuming.

Well you could save yourself a lot of time by deselecting software during
the install process and choose a lightweight desktop like xfce or icewm.
--
Chris Maaskant

On 2008-08-19, Bert Hyman wrote:

>> Does the 600E have a DVD drive ?
>
> Not all do, but mine does, in the "UltraSlimBay". It's a snappy 2X
> reader.

Very nice. Happy installing, then !


--
The sand remembers once there was beach and sunshine
but chip is warm too
-- haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6