Looking for some help.
 

First off let me describe a little about myself. I've been screwing around with different distros on and off for a while now. My abilities and knowledge base, though, are probably more in the realms of barely intermediate.

Now to my current situation. I recently purchased a laptop that will be delivered soon. My plan with the laptop is to go with a minimalist install, basically kernel, shell and package manager, then XFCE and a few other basic tools. All I'm really concerned about using it for is screwing around writing my own programs with perl and GTK(and other modules) having fun and learning a little in the process.

I have never done such an install, so what I'm looking for is a little help in finding free sources of succinct information to help me along this process.

You can do minimal installs with Debian or CentOS just by selecting the "minimal install" option during installation process (as opposed to Desktop or Web Server or other options).

You can also do a fairly minimal install of Slackware during install time. Decline the recommended FULL install option and manually define which packages you want...or you can cheat and install Zenwalk, which is comparatively minimal itself.

That said, I wonder if you really need a more "minimal" install than what any Linux distribution provides in the first place. A base install of even a "bloated" Linux system rarely exceeds 8G total, and it's usually a lot less than that. In other words, Linux starts out pretty minimal, compared to other OS's, and if you're just starting out, then making sure you have a distribution that is at least pre-configured to work properly might suit you better than starting with something that you cobbled together yourself. Maybe give yourself some time with pre-configured Linux before taking a hacksaw to it and carving it down to what you [think] you need. Check out Peppermint OS or Zenwalk or AntiX; all of those are minimal by design.

Hi.

Others too; try searching a distro's name with netinstall after it, keep in mind you may need non-free in there?
So: some-distro netinstall non-free ;)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...0/#post5544589

have fun! :)

Thank you
 

Thank you for the reply notKlaatu,

Great information. Thank you for your suggestion, and I understand your points in going with an all inclusive installation, but I have decided I'd still rather go minimal. Looking at the options you presented and a quick look at the sites for those OS's I think I would like to go with either Slackware or Debian. Any sort of input on the advantages and disadvantages of these two would be helpful.

Again thanks for the quick informative reply.

8 GB is not very lean, my / is 3 GB, with Libroffice, Firefox, Chromium, games ...

I use Slackware, myself, because it places no barrier between me and the packages I want installed. It is very direct, that way; if you want something installed, then you can install it and only it, if that's what you want. It will never pull something in and install it for you just because it thinks (or knows) that you will need it.

This is seen by some people as inconvenient, but I find it more inconvenient when I tell Debian, for instance, to install Audacity and it also installs <strike>ffmpeg<strike> libav-tools even though I didn't ask for it (and so then I have to go figure out how to circumvent Debian's package management to override its defaults).

That said, Debian may well be the way you want to go if you prefer sane defaults for things you know you'll be doing. For instance, if you're installing a perl library and it depends on 30 other perl libraries, Debian might be nice since it will take care of those 30 dependencies for you (or you could just use CPAN on Slackware).

In other words, I personally recommend Slackware; you'll learn a lot about Linux, Unix, software packaging and management, and you'll get development libraries and headers with everything you install. But, obviously, you're bound to get lots of other recommendations from other people, and they'll have very valid points, too.

My point exactly; that's why I called an 8gb install "bloated". But I was contrasting that to many other systems on the market, where 8gb would account maybe for one IDE (plus compiler and examples and libs), not even counting the OS.

Looking for some help.
 

There's a few posts in slackware forum about minimal install...
Btw I agree with notKlaatu.

Thanks again.
 

Thank you again notKlaatu,

I think I will go slack because I am also a little interested in learning more about the overall linux structure. I haven't used CPAN in the past, but as long as I can get it on my system pretty easy, I now I could learn how to use it.

Another thumbs up for Slackware!

But I would recommend the full install. It just isn't that big and if there are things that you are not using, they do not consume resources other than their storage space. Then, when you want to install something not included in the base distro, such as anything from SBo build scripts (highly recommended as well), you will have no missing dependencies from the base distro - which will become important to you if you intend any serious play!

I run Slackware with Fluxbox, Tmux as my "development environment" and couldn't be happier!

If not familiar with Tmux or GNU Screen, both included in Slackware, and you intend to do a lot of coding in a shell environment, then have a look at one! Tmux is my hands down favorite! You will never obstruct yourself with a GUI development environment again!

You are not locked to one install with Linux. My suggestion would be to set up a multiboot system. Create a partition with a full install and also a partition with your desired minimal install. These partitions could share a common /home partition with your personal data.

Thanks
 

I appreciate the additional input. My computer came earlier than expected and I am about to download the install media for slackware. I think I will just go with the full install.

Interesting idea allend, but I am going to currently go with a single distro install and keep things simple, I always appreciate creative suggestions though.

*Special Note*
I have marked this thread as solved and considered the main issue resolved, but for anyone else coming across this post I would appreciate any additional info people would like to share, or their suggestions, in any relevant arenas around running a slackware machine. Also keep in mind that the date I am writing this is 5/16/2016. Anytime past a few months of that date you should not consider posting anything, as I will most likely have moved on and will not be paying attention to the thread.

For later on... +2 on multibooting. If one hits a snag or restrictions others have access and\or different sets of tools, not to mention too-many to miss out on:Pengy: :D