Minimal X Installation

querist asks: "What is the minimum needed to get X up and running? I have an old Thinkpad 360Cs (486, 12 MB RAM, 328 MB HD) and I'm currently running ZipSlack on it because I have no CD drive for it and no network card. I do have a floppy and a Zip drive, and potential access to a cable modem. If it matters, I'm not entirely sure of the LDC display's resolution... it's either 640x480x256max or 800x600x256max. I know it does VGA and I'm pretty sure it can do SVGA to some extent. Could someone please kindly list the minimum files i'd need to get my machine to be able to run X? I would need an X term, of course. From there I should be able to manage."

Comments

hm..

[Zurk]

i installed slackware 4.0 on a 386 with 8mb ram and a 40 mb hdd, with network and base system (A & N series with liberal removals of packages). total system size was 30mb for a usable system. (4mb swap and the rest went into free space + partition table). the X series is as big as the A series. figure approx. 80meg of hdd space at the max for X..Do a floppy install and choose custom and look at each package as you install it. zipslack is the lazy way to go and not as useful as looking and reading the text for each package.

if it helps..

[Zurk]

you have more hardware than any of the machines i installed slackware linux on. there shouldnt be any problem i can think off to get X working. of course, dont even think about redhat/debian whatever..stick to slackware.

Time to slim + trim that big ol' X

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1. Do a custom install, one package at a time: vga or svga xserver, twm/mwm or some ultra light/minimalist window manager, basic X clients + utils, and the misc & 75 dpi fonts. (Note: if you use tar or a package manager like Deb or RPM, you can extract the specific X clients and manually install them. You must install xfontsel and other X font utils for the next step. (You can gzip/gzexe or remove them afterwards. More later.)

Step 2. Shed some newly installed fonts. Get rid of all Fonts over 14 points. Get rid of obscure/fancy-ass fonts as well. Keep basic ones only: Courier, Arial, Times, Symbol, etc. You must keep the non-Asian Misc fonts under 14pts. especially Cursors. Then with xfontsel or whatever, rebuild your Font database. (Note: You may or may-not need to make font aliases/associations for the removed font typefaces. If "Garamound" is needed, you'd need to make sure Times replaces it.)

Step 3. For any _binary_ utility you (not the system) rarely use, do a gzexe on its ass. Then when you run it, it will seemlessly launch a decompress copy of it from /tmp or /var/tmp. Be warned - if tmp doesn't have enough space, it won't launch. If you want to restore it back to its original uncompressed binary, do the gzexe again with the decompress/restore switch. This is great for rarely used X clients.

Using the methods above, I was able to place MacX 1.0 on a single floppy disk for my Mac to reach my Linux box. I could even run it off the floppy as well. Pretty wild, eh?

Later, Markus.
---------------------------
markstinson@hotmail.com

Server and libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Really all you NEED is the server and client libs. However, X without a WM is unbearable maybe even unuseable,...and many of the programs included in X are certainly useful.

I would install the main tgz file and the server you need, pluss fvwm2. This will give the smallest *useable* X possible.

Re:Server and libraries

[RinkRat]

Eh, go with blackbox for your wm. I've found it to be *the* smallest, fastest, bestest wm around.

No graphics libs needed. Just c++ and X. Have fun

mulinux

[Anonymous Coward]

search for mulinux, it's from Italy.
You can get linux & X11 on 2 floppies.

Re:mulinux

[gavinhall]

Posted by NateY.:

I also think this is your best bet...I unzipped the muLinux X disk, tweaked a bit, and ended up with a working X install of about 4.5 MB (combined with the LRP console install, the whole OS was only 8.5 MB). A warning, though: the mulinux X I got was libc5-based, so if your system is g/libc6, you may need to grab an X server from elsewhere.

I also recommend the 9wm window manager...at about 25k, it's hard to beat for size. It's also very simple...no libraries needed, no configuration files to keep track of, etc...perfect for a minimal X install. Not much to look at, but functional...

360cs info

[Anonymous Coward]

as far as i can tell, the display will only do 640x480x256 and you will also need a program called tpdualscan or your screen will show two halves, not one whole picture.
if you figure out how to get the sound running, let me know please...
dave

small Debian X11

[chguy]

You can do a complete install via the parallel laplink cable. Go to a running linux box that has a CDROM drive and enable plip pointopoint to your hostname. Make sure you export the /dev/cdrom and /cdrom drives to your host. Do not need to mount them.
Grab a Debian 2.1 CD and put it in the desktop machine.
Make the resc1440tecra.bin diskette to boot your machine. Make the drv1440.bin diskette for the kernel modules.
Do a Debian 2.1 custom install of just the standard server and the XFree86.
Get Afterstep or icewm or fvwm2.
Get mc. Get lynx. Get a ton of stuff. You have lots of room.
Plus you will learn how to plip network to your desktop.
Don't forget to install netmaze! Cheers, Bill Bennet.

Small kernel in an old laptop

[Fartalot]

I have toshiba T2000SXe i386, 40M HD, 1.4M RAM
with a floppy drive. Because the memory is lower than 4 meg I couldn't install Smalllinux, tinyX, or mulinux.
I installed Linux-lite by Paul Gortmaker which could run in a really small size of RAM. Running nicely @ 2 Bogomips. the kernel is 1.0.9 and in /lib is libc.so.4.5.26
Linux lite comes with vi, grep, less, more, setterm along with basic /bin


the HD still have plenty of space left and I want to install mc, fortune, etc. Anyone knows how to install gcc by floppy?


Thank you very much before :)

Another vote for muLinux

[rstacey]

http://mulinux.nevalabs.org
Wonderful 3 floppy-based linux complete with gcc and X11 (with 3 window managers too!). It will also install directly onto a FAT based hard drive under c:\linux too. Just customize and type 'clone'.

I use it a lot. nice.

X11 istelf might not work straight away (or you may want to escape from VGA 16 colours ugh), so follow the information on the site to install a new X server.

Good luck.

You have plenty of space

[marcus]

I once built, and still use(as an X server only) a working slackware system based on a 386sx40, SVGA/ISA card at 800x600x256, 16MB of RAM and a 100MB disk. I cut it into 20M of swap which was way more than needed and 80M for /.

I do have access to ethernet for it and used it to do an NFS or FTP, I can't remember now, install from the main box.
Just do a custom install, pick your packages and fonts carefully, select one X server and window manager, toss all the docs(although you probably have enough room), kernel source and perhaps all the dev tools and you're off and running. I gave up on the dev tools after I tried a kernel compile and found that it was taking *hours*, as in overnight and still not completed!

You probably could do a ppp link if you don't have *any* hope of running an ethernet link or getting a CDROM to attach to it. It might be slow, but it will work.

Running a GUI on a system that wouldnt run win 3.x

[CiXeL]

The REAL challenge is running a GUI on a system that wouldnt otherwise run even windows 3.x. I pulled this off under dos 3.0 on a 4.77mhz XT using an old GUI for pcs called GEM/3 and a mouse which was popular on ataris. Anyone else know if there is a linux equivelant yet? If you could beat GEM i'd be impressed.

Re:Running a GUI on a system that wouldnt run win

[sjx]

GEM/3? Ack. I still have nightmares. Even the Ataris have moved on (one proprietary, GUI-based bloatware OS, one free open-source UN!X-like... see how art imitates life ) since then. :)

For what it's worth, there's a (truly lousy) monochrome port of X11r5 on my machine. It's a testament to some people's neat MiNT kernel coding that it actually runs at a recognisable speed :)... It doesn't take much, and can be slimmed down a hell of a way. You might want to prune those fonts, they're the biggest space-waster on my system. ;) (One day, I shall run Enlightenment on liquidrage, just to see what'll happen, and I shall know the true meaning of load averages which look like Bill Gates' bank balance, and swap partitions which cause my poor hard disk to walk away in disgust. But it'll run, dammit. Even if it will take an hour to render the window, I can still take impressive-looking screenshots. )

Re: Single-floppy X, picoBSD with W, tomsrtbt

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a relatively old windowing system called W, which is more like GEM than X11. To call it minimal would be putting it mildly.
Check it out:
http://www.modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~puujalka/w1r2.html
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/techfak/ags/ti /personen/itschere/w.html

The picoBSD distribution of FreeBSD manages to fit PPP, SSH, and W (with weyes, wclock, and a web browser called -don't laugh- wetscape) onto a single floppy.

If you're looking for the absolute maximum packed onto a single floppy, it's hard to beat tomsrtbt - Linux 2.0.36 and a whole heap of useful stuff, on a 1.7Mb floppy. It even has a floppy image (Memtest-86) included, so it's two diskettes in one! :-) No room for any windowing system though.

Does this floppy format really break certain floppy drives, and if so, how old do said drives need to be?

GEM was released under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

And I think I read about it on slashdot :)