Substitute for X11
 

Hey all,

I have installed debian on my system as only a base system and want to install fluxbox. I believe i first need to install a version of X to make this work. I was wondering if there were a minimalist version of X? I looked into Tiny X/Small X/Kdrive but there doesn't seem to be very much documentation on how to install/configure it. Are there any suggestions? I am trying to keep the ram useage down to a minimum... the codes i use are extrememly ram intensive.

Can't say i know of a substitute for X,but the following guide i recommend for minimal Debian installs:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=13362

So to do what you need based on the guide i'd do:

This should give you an install of X,a basic login manager and Fluxbox.
Have a read see what you think.

Edit:Forgot to say,using a login/display manager is not mandatory.
You can start the gui with the startx command,or it's possible to configure the system to boot directly into the gui.

Thanks for your help trooper! I was hoping there would be some way that i could install some x server that would use very little resources. I run a lot of code that is RAM intensive and was hoping there were an xserver out there or a way to configure such that it doesn't eat up so many resources... Is there a way to solve this?

You mentioned installing fluxbox, is that not minimal enough? A system running xserver and a lightwight WM like WindowMaker or Fluxbox is generally pretty snappy and requires very little resources. Things like switching to Aterm/Xterm instead of Konsole, or XMMS instead of Amarok can certainly free up some memory as well. In my experience, it's all the other stuff running that seems to eat up my memory. Even things like disabling an unused network card can free up some resources.

There's still xf86, or kdrive, or [url=http://www.y-windows.org/]Y

There are many more implementations, but you are only going to reduce the memory load by ripping out features. In any case, Xorg itself can be compiled with less features if that's truly what you want. There's a minimal flag for the configure script that disables xvfb, xnest, dri, dri2, glx, record and probably many more sweeties. Beware, minimal really means minimal. Most modern applications will assume you have a current server, and not something from the stone age.

As said above, you shouldn't really be worrying about this unless you are doing some very specialized stuff. All you can save from here will be pointless if you are planning to run firefox. X is not much of a deal compared to the rest of programs that most people use nowadays.