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A Newbie's Guide To A Lo-Fat Linux Desktop

Posted by Hemos on from the lean-and-mean dept.

A reader writes:"This article is what I needed a few years ago, when I first started playing with Linux. It's about building a fast and usable desktop using software that doesn't need a squillion horsepower." Good article if you are putting together an older machine to run as a dedicated box, or what to cobble together a terminal with spare parts.

3 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. A few more suggestions by Otter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My Linux box at work is a PowerMac 7200/75 MHz that gives me snappier performance than my 1200 MHz Athlon running Mandrake at home. I like the tips here but have a few more suggestions:
    • Use an older distro. I suggested this the last time this topic came up here, and generally got flamed for it, but I still think it's worth considering. If you're only running CLI or old style X apps, you may find it a lot easier to use Red Hat 5.0 and add the newer pieces you want than to try to cut one of the newer megadistros down to size. New distros don't even come with stuff like xplaycd or xfm. Just made sure to update for any security holes.
    • Try Gtk only apps. A lot of the utilities like xchat and grip run perfectly happily without Gnome, pointing out just how little you (or me, anyway) need all that hyped communication framework bloat. KDE apps don't cut down nearly as well (I'll leave it to the zealots to argue whether this is a win for KDE's superior integration or GNOME's modularity...) but your old distro will have KDE 1.x which is usable and really fast.
    • I must put in a plug for WindowMaker. It's all the desktop I need, whereas the really minimal WMs are too little for me, and still flies.
    • I also like Xenon as a text editor. It's lighter weight than Nedit, and is nice if you want a minimal X editor.
    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  2. More usable, and still just as light by SCHecklerX · · Score: 4, Interesting
    for the Window Manager, use Windowmaker and for the filemanager/pinboard, use Rox Filer.

    And whatever you do, DON't run KDE apps!

  3. Re:there are distros for this purpose by kaisyain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use debian and generally like it.

    But last time I checked installing apache under debian requires installing libmysql first (explain that one to me). Installing postfix requires installing sasl, ldap, pcre, and mysql libs. Try installing any of the courier suit in a "waist slim" state. Debian wants to install telnetd and inetd out-of-the-box and I can't remove netkit-inetd because netbase depends on it. Samba requires CUPS even though I don't own a printer. CUPS in turn makes me install tiff libraries. I need to install db2 for man and perl but I need db3 for postfix. Vim and links require I have gpm installed even though there is no mouse on the computer.

    All this is on a relatively bare bones server. Debian is nice but "waist slim" it is not.