[SOLVED] Distro that needs the least amount of space

Faithfully10 · 05-22-2011, 06:30 PM

Does anyone know which distro does not need too much space. I have 4G and so far lubuntu and unbuntu both need 4 or more. Thanks.

Mr. Bill · 05-22-2011, 06:46 PM

To use the least amount of space, you could try the PuppyLinux live CD and save the sessions to hdd for faster boot-up. The session is saved to a compressed file that has a recommended size of 512M and a max of 1.25G. It's going to be really difficult to squeeze a swap partition and file system out of 4G.

Faithfully10 · 05-22-2011, 07:13 PM

Would easy peasy 1.6 work?

tsandholm · 05-22-2011, 08:38 PM

Take a look at DSL (Damn Small Linux).
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

TobiSGD · 05-22-2011, 08:51 PM

I wouldn't recommend DSL, it is unsupported since 2008.
For tiny distros you have many choices, I would recommend antiX or Vector. If you want something really small you can try Tinycore (steep learning curve), Slitaz or Puppy.
You can also do a base install without desktop of one of the greater distributions and then add only the applications you want to use on that machine.

Faithfully10 · 05-22-2011, 08:56 PM

I am not linux savvy enough to install DSL.

austinium · 05-22-2011, 11:29 PM

you could try debian-6.0.1a-i386-xfce+lxde-CD-1.iso from http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.1a/i386/iso-cd/

Faithfully10 · 05-23-2011, 04:51 AM

I tried debian and could not get it to work. Do I partition?

TobiSGD · 05-23-2011, 05:02 AM

The XFCE and LXDE versions are more lightweight.
What do you mean with "Do I partition?"?

austinium · 05-23-2011, 05:17 AM

as TobiSGD said the XFCE & LXDE versions take up less HDD space than the standard GNOME version. The same goes for any distribution.
You'll need at least two partitions, one for / (where all the files will be stored) and another for Swap (where Linux will store data when it runs out of RAM).

brianL · 05-23-2011, 05:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faithfully10

Do I partition?

Yes. At least two: one for /, and one for swap. How much RAM have you?

Faithfully10 · 05-23-2011, 07:35 AM

Thanks you so much! Apparently all this time I was trying to install the wrong debian. I was able to install the debian 6.0.1a lxde desktop and sofware utilities this morning. I did not partition. I have 512 mb ram (I think). It is an ASUS eeepc 701 4 g 512mb 900 mhz.

So when I get home later I will need to figure out how to use it! ugh... It looks like it has nothing. I was hoping to have skype and firefox.

Would the xfce be a better choice. Should I reinstall and partition?

Thanks again for helping me out.

TobiSGD · 05-23-2011, 07:41 AM

You can install Iceweasel easily, it is a renamed Firefox (due to licensing issues), for skype you can use the Debian package delivered by skype, you can find that here.

To install any software on that system you can use the Synaptic package manager, you should find that in your menu.

Faithfully10 · 05-23-2011, 07:50 AM

Is there an online manual on how to use debain lxde?

MTK358 · 05-23-2011, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faithfully10

So when I get home later I will need to figure out how to use it! ugh... It looks like it has nothing. I was hoping to have skype and firefox.

Debian is the kind of distro you can make into whatever you want. So it's not going to come with that kind of stuff (especially Skype, it's proprietary).