Yes, I know it's akin to asking "How long is a piece of string?" but I'm sure all the newbies understand where I'm coming from...

I appreciate that there is a huge range of Linux distros to choose from and it's difficult to give a definitive answer. However it would enable newbies to make an informed choice and avoid trying to install a huge distro on a hard drive with inadequate space It certainly seems to be a question that crops up time and time again on Linux forums.

a/. Which distros take up the least space (Puppy, DamnSmallLinux etc ?)

b/. Which distros are medium sized for disks that aren't humungous (somewhere between 3Gb and 6Gb)

c/. Which distros are huge and require 6 - 10Gb plus.

d/. Which distros are flexible and eminently customisable so you can choose small, medium or humungous versions when you install.

I write this having taken a liking to a distro which, according to advice I've seen, needs between 8 and 10 Gb for a full installation .... when I only have five to tinker around with

SilverMermaid

Welcome to L.Q.
a/b/c/d/ -> seriously, it all depends on what you end up installing.
And what distro might that be? Do you need to install everything? Are you suggesting that you have to install everything for this distro to work? What are your needs or interests?

My install is right now using just a hair over 4GB without taking any precautions to keep things small (data is on a different drive). It is Mepis--part of the Debian/Ubuntu family.

Why only 5GB to play with--what is the overall configuration (drives, partitions, etc.)?

How about buying another drive? 40GB is really cheap these days

Thanks for the welcome twilli.

Actually, the advice I saw was for the the 'install everything' version of SimplyMepis which included KDE plus the full Open Office suite. I don't think I'm a particularly demanding computer user - I run two websites for our businesses (on ISP servers), take a fair amount of digital photos and video, I've ripped about 40Gb of CDs onto my computer, collect information off the web for all sorts of purposes (my Linux info folder is growing at an alarming rate!), I'm studying for a degree so there's quite a bit of academic stuff .... actually, on my main Win XP computer I think I'm using about 100Gb of space on the 160Gb hard drive. But I do need a full Office suite and I prefer KDE to Gnome

pixellany, I'm using my four year old HP/Compaq laptop as a guinea pig for my Linux explorations. It only has a 20Gb hard drive and I've allowed 14Gb for the Win XPSP2 installation. So I've been working on 5Gb for a Linux distro. I don't want to pull out a perfectly good 20Gb laptop hard drive just because I need a bigger one - that seems rather extravagant And I'm not intending to abandon Win XP altogether because my husband uses both the office and laptop computers and I can't see him getting to grips with Linux very quickly (he's only started using Win Xp in the last year or so ...)

You see, it's not really clear to newbies that it's possible to pick and choose from the various packages to tailor your install. I would imagine most go for the default installation which probably includes more than they actually need. Besides, some of the package names are pretty cryptic and not always easy to understand.

Thanks for your help

SilverMermaid

SilverMermaid, you or anyone else could ask here about the amount of hd space needed for a particular distro. Someone might know, or you will have to go to the distros main sites to get the info. I would also try out some live versions on your laptop to see if any will work.
Or this:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/