I am a newbie and have pretty much installed everything on the 3 installation cds that came with my dist (mainly due to frustration brought on by trying to compile programs) There always seemed to be somthing missing.

I dont really care about the prettyness of my GUI I like to keep things as simple as uncluttered as I can make them, on my computer anyway (they certainly arnt at the moment).

Its not that bad but I would really like to speed everything up but still have a GUI and all the things like the network device control so that I dont need to type commands that I dont know to connect to the Internet.

I downloaded black box and installed it (I think) but I dont know how to start it up it would be cool if I could choose it like I can choose between KDE or Gnome when I log in at the moment.

Can anyone point me in the right direction here?
Adam

Moving to the RedHat Forum

Cool

Sounds like you're on the right track. Personally, I enjoy working with a very minimal desktop myself in order to conserve battery power since I do everything from my laptop). Since your question is a bit vauge, I'll just offer some general guidelines:

1. (Obviously), you want to do a custom install and only include things that you know you need.
2. Disable unneeded services
3. Install a lightweight desktop environment (personally, I like fluxbox)
4. Use apt4rpm for software maintenence (freshrpms.net, apt4rpm.sf.net)

Everything I discussed can be found in the Securing & Optimizing Redhat Guide on tldp.org

Here's the URL, it's a great read!http://tldp.org/LDP/solrhe/Securing-...1.3/index.html

According to the info at tldp.org, a newer version (2.0) of this book can be viewed in .pdf format. I haven't read this (yet).

Furthermore, you may want to check out this article that describes screen. I love this tool!

The AntiDesktop
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/

Also, you may want to check out mutt for your email and firebird for browsing.

Best,
Adam

Thanks fUnD I am having a look at those links as I type (well actually I was before I started typing and will do again when I stop)

Thanks for the info looks good... just hope its not toooo complicated me being new and all.

Anti sounds a little complicated for me at the moment but I like the idea! Pretty much just what I was thinking command line but you can run gui applications right? Cool

Speed Speed Speed.... and no crap that all I want (but still with the good stuff)

Adam

I agree with windowsrefund. I will just add a little clarification

To turn off uneeded servies use the utility
serviceconf

Install fluxbox. Then, to add fluxbox it is according to how you login. Do you first come to a command-line and have to type startx or do you login to a graphical utility and it takes you straight to the GUI. If it does, do you know what if it is kdm, gdm, or xdm?

If it is gdm create a file named Fluxbox in /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions with the following lines

#!/bin/bash
exec /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession fluxbox

If you enter the command-line first, create a file named .xinitrc
and put in it the line
exec fluxbox

Hope this helps

hey darth thanks for the clarification... I am now using flux and I like it! I didnt have to put it into my graphical start up menu as when I istalled it, it did it for me... how civilised.

I had a look at serviceconf .... only I dont actually (as stupid as it sounds) know what things I need and dont need running. What are some common things that would be running that I dont need?

One other thing is there anyway to add things to the fluxbox menu?

Thanks

Cool

1. I don't know what all the services are for If your not running your own web server, turn off httpd. It hogs the system resources. You will notice a definite change.

2. You will have a file
~/.fluxbox/menu
By looking at it you should get the basic syntax
Lines will be like:
[exec] (Gimp) {gimp}
The ( ) determine how the progam will appear in the menu and the { } contains the program. It can contain options.

Thanks for all the help... everything under control... well sort of. Its not hard at all to change those menus

xawtv has even almost completely stopped crashing since I started using fluxbox (it did one time)

Adam

Easiest speedup? Add more RAM and a faster CPU. 8)

After the previous suggestions, you can investigate recompiling major system components to enable processor-specific optimizations,like glibc, XFree86, QT, GTK. It's an involved process and takes a lot of time, but it's fun.

I'd go for the RAM and CPU myself.

I have a celeron 1700 with 512mb ram and Radeon 9100.... do you reakon I need a faster cpu or more ram to do some emailing and play a few games? I reakon probably the thing that is slowing things down is my 5400rpm hdd.

Adam

get a 7200 rpm drive with a 8MB cache. mucho faster.

the CPU and RAM helps if you are doing "real work" on the box. 8)