Ubuntu and the vast majority of general purpose distributions (openSUSE, Fedora, Mageia) have indeed become more and more resource-hungry. One of the many reasons I use Slackware, since this is about the only distribution where I can be positive the installer won't choke on some piece of old and/or exotic hardware.

BTW, there's no direct link between the "modernity" of a PC and the amount of RAM it has. I'd say there's a suitable amount of RAM for every machine and every use. You can have a perfectly working desktop with 512 MB - there's one right next to me - and you can have barely enough with 8 GB of RAM and an 8-core processor (on a scientific calculation workstation, for example).

Concerning the services to launch on startup, you'll be fine with the default choice. Unlike the usual suspects among distributions - see above - Slackware doesn't launch every single service on startup, but tends to default to a reasonable minimum. For a desktop, you might want to enable CUPS for printing, and that's it. And you can always do it when the time comes to configure your printer. And BTW, there's no HAL anymore. It's replaced by udisks now.

Cheers,

Niki

Ubuntu and the vast majority of general purpose distributions (openSUSE, Fedora, Mageia) have indeed become more and more resource-hungry. One of the many reasons I use Slackware, since this is about the only distribution where I can be positive the installer won't choke on some piece of old and/or exotic hardware, and the system will run on quite many low-spec configurations.

BTW, there's no direct link between the "modernity" of a PC and the amount of RAM it has. I'd say there's a suitable amount of RAM for every machine and every use. You can have a perfectly working desktop with 512 MB - there's one right next to me - and you can have barely enough with 8 GB of RAM and an 8-core processor (on a scientific calculation workstation, for example).

Concerning the services to launch on startup, you'll be fine with the default choice. Unlike the usual suspects among distributions - see above - Slackware doesn't launch every single service on startup, but tends to default to a reasonable minimum. For a desktop, you might want to enable CUPS for printing, and that's it. And you can always do it when the time comes to configure your printer. And BTW, there's no HAL anymore. It's replaced by udisks now.

Cheers,

Niki

First rule of thumb: install what is proposed as the default and don't worry.

After installation you will be able to revise your choices anyway running as root the 'pkgtool' utility. Choose the 'setup' option then 'services' to do that.

To make sound choices, first read the comments at the beginning of the scripts included in /etc/rc.d/ directory.

The RAM used is not the only concern though: security is even more important.

So, second rule of thumb: only keep selected services you are sure you will need.

EDIT. Too late, again... This doesn't matter after all as I was not the addressee of that question

I only mean that, given a machine and given a certain application, the most powerful the hardware, except RAM, the less RAM you'll need to perform at a certain speed. To take a simple example, CPUs have RAM inside it. First of all, registers (the old accumulator, for instance. Now imagine the CPU has 10^18 registers. Why would you want RAM? The more RAM, you yourself have said, the more speed you'll likely get (it depends, of course). Inversely, the less RAM,the less speed, which can be compensated by a 10 core multiprocessing processor. That's it.

Now, what concerns me, is the following: the first time I run setup (or pkgtool) I can see the default selection. I modify the selection and, a year later, I want to modify again and I find setup (instead of running pkgtool I boot with the installtation disk and run setup) has forgotten the default selection and has mine instead, which, if I did not write down in a paper which ones they were, is a real inconvinience.

Example, last time I deselected HAL and found certain problems when running the GUI. So I reran setup. But the values (things preselected) were not the same as in the first time! So I had no other choice than, besides selecting HAL, to select all of the services, except some of them that were clearly useless to me.

Many of the software included in Slackware is intended for portable machines, by the way, which is rather a annoyance for desktop users. And even some things are setup for use by portables, as energy administration. I want to save energy too! Regards,

Enrique.

In fact there is no 'default selection' of services proposed by Slackware, even at time of installation. The proposed selection of services, be it during installation or later, is not 'built-in'. Instead, it is built dynamically, scanning the list of configuration files present in /etc/rc.d. This list of files in turn vary depending on which packages are installed.

That's sound: what would be the point of proposing you to launch at boot time a service bound to an application which is not even installed?

That's part of the 'Slackware philosophy', so to speak: install then run what you want, the way you want. Slackware helps you configure your system but will not decide for you.

Well, let's say a fast machine without enough RAM is like a Porsche with wooden tyres. All the horsepower under the hood will be lost.

Concerning your service selection, remember the KISS principle. Just leave your preselected minimal services as is, and you're good. Don't try desperately to trim this selection, you'll only save a neglectible amount of system resources, but end up shooting yourself in the foot and pulling your hair out.

Thanks Didier and Niki. I now know a bit more than before starting the thread. One thing, however. Let's call the services A, B, C. At system installation I select A, B. Some time later I change my mind and decide to get rid of B. But in the meantime, I have forgotten which were the ones I initially selected. What shall I do? I think its a helpless scenario if I am just a beginner. As I had no idea what these services do, I can't start from scratch again and select the whole set of services I want to be run.

If I do not make myself sufficiently clear do not hessitate in letting me know.

Just write down on a paper the list of services you select at time of installation, then document on the same paper the changes you make afterwards.

If you have no idea of what a service does, on which basis will you decide to select it or not?

Again, read the comments at the beginning of the scripts in /etc/rc.d to figure out their purposes and if you have specific questions someone here will be pleased to answer.

The /etc/rc.d directory holds all your services. Here it is.

Let's say I want to know if rc.cups is activated:

It is, since the script is executable (-rwxr-xr-x).

Now let's check something else, for example rc.httpd:

This script is not executable, so it will not launch on startup.

It's because I can know what ONE service does. E.g., I know I do not need PCMCIA because my machine lacks it. So I never select it.

Maybe a page in SlackDocs listing all scripts in /etc/rc.d/ in case of a full installation with a terse description & purpose & use cases for each could be useful then, if it doesn't exist yet.

1 members found this post helpful.

Didier, I'm seeing your link's page, although I can't find the exact place within it. Of course, many thanks for the link and I'll go on trying to find the place (it ought to be a link within the page).

You know?, I'm installing Slack 14.0, after Niki's insistence (here), . As I installed it on a second hard disk in order to test it, and left 12.0 on the first one, I'm getting the message 'VFS: Cannot open root device "801" or Unknown-block(8,1)' when booting 12.0. Bad lack. It's going to take me some time to solve this. Regards.