DamnSmallLinuxThis forum is for the discussion of DamnSmallLinux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Distribution: Mint 20, Kali, Peppermint, Ubuntu, MakuluFlash, Fedora 32, Windows 12 Lite, MakuluLinux
Posts: 821
Rep:
How much space does it require
I have tried running Linux Mint on an Asus Eee PC 4G 701. It seemed to be progressing until I reached the 'Select a wi-fi', at this point, it wouldn't let me use the arrows to select. I chose to by pass this bit and then it told me that the OS requires 9.2 gB of space and of course mine only has 4gB. Any ideas?
DamnSmall hasn't been updated in a long time. I would recommend a modern Linux distribution, such as Debian. A full XFCE4 desktop install will fit, but it'll be very tight. Instead, I'd go with a minimal install and only adding XFCE4 plus the software you want.
After doing a minimal install, do a lightweight GUI install with:
Depending on the precise hardware in that eeePC, you may have to add the "contrib nonfree" components to /etc/apt/sources.list (append " contrib nonfree" to all source lines after "main"), and then run:
on an asus eeepc 701, you won't be happy with mint's performance anyways - even if you install a "lightweight" xfce or even mate. (900MHz Celeron)
you should go with something that is actually designed for this sort of extremely underpowered & outdated machine (*) - if you like tinkering, set yourself up with debian oldstable netinstall + some lightweight windowmanager, or maybe use something like antiX or Sparky or puppylinux...
(*) i'm not dissing you, in fact i love these old netbooks and have one myself, but that's just how it is...
I'll second Mill J. For your machine, Puppy really is the way to go. There's a guy called 8Geee who runs a fleet of these old netbooks, and he's built a couple of 'special' Puppy distros specifically for the EeePCs.
You won't find anything that'll run better on one, neither, as they've been specially optimised to take advantage of the wacky hardware Asus used in these things.
No disrespect to Isaac, but he's right; Debian will be a tight fit.....especially with those dozy eMMc drives. Or, if you like the idea of using the Debian model with apt-get and the stable repositories, there's another breed of Puppies known as the DebianDogs. These are really the Debian LiveCD, which have been customized to act, feel & behave like a Puppy.....yet still have all the advantages you get with Debian's famous stability.
If you're interested, you can read about it in the Dogs' development thread on the Puppy Linux Forums:-
I will warn you that there's been some bickering going on recently in this thread. The Dog's originator, Toni from Bulgaria (better known to all as saintless), no longer maintains them, as he had an extended spell of illness which meant he couldn't continue with their development. The guys who 'took over' development began to take them in a totally different direction to that which Toni intended; as a result, he's been accused of deliberately 'disrupting' his own thread..!
Puppy 'politics'. Ugh. Don't get involved.....
Mike.
Last edited by Mike_Walsh; 08-28-2017 at 03:43 AM.
Debian is NOT a tight fit. It's an easy fit. Only the full default desktop install will be a tight fit. That's because it includes the entirety of LibreOffice and many other things by default. But if you just do a minimal install the way I suggest? It'll fit easily in under 2GB even after adding useful software (in other words, less than half of the available space).
Seriously, I have a keen knowledge of how much Debian will fit in under 4GB because I use RAMBOOT with various computers that have 4GB of RAM. This is a technique where I customize the initrd script to load the entire OS into a tmpfs RAM drive (tmpfs is uncompressed, so performance is incredibly fast). With RAMBOOT, not only does the OS have to fit within the 4GB of RAM, but also all of the normal RAM usage.
Also, I have various USB thumbdrives that I do regular Debian installs on. None of them are very big - only two of them are 8GB in size and all of the rest are smaller. This gives me a very good idea of how much Debian will fit on a 4GB or 2GB or 1GB drive. For 1GB, I don't install a GUI; it's mainly useful as a boot utility. For 512MB or less, it's mainly useful only for /boot, but it's less elegant to maintain than a full install on a 1GB thumbdrive.
But for 2GB and 4GB USB thumbdrives? I put XFCE4 GUI on them. With plain old Debian stable. (There really isn't much of any sort of savings by using oldstable.)
I'd go for AntiX. That installs software from Debian stable that's specially selected for small or elderly computers: it will take less that 2 of your precious 4GB. Yes, you could make a basic installation of Debian and add more things, but AntiX has already done the job for you.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.