[GRLUG] on a PowerBook G4

[Kyle]

On 01/11/2012 08:28 AM, Ben Rousch wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 7:58 AM, Topher<topher at codeventure.net>  wrote:
>> I don't remember how much RAM this one has, but the minimum for that
>> platform was 128.  That makes me want to do something like debian, and strip
>> it down as much as I can.
> I think the base Xubuntu install with no user programs was using
> 280MB, so there's definitely room to shave it down. A certain person
> (not me) who regularly hangs out in the IRC channel and at the
> Wednesday Socials has some experience doing that.

If you can get it installed, stop by tomorrow and I'd be happy to help 
you strip it down.  I did a presentation on doing just that a while back 
but am unfamiliar with installing to Macs.  If you can't, bring it 
anyway and we'll see if we can figure it out.  Right now I've got two 
ARM devices that I regularly carry around with me that run Debian.

I'd strongly suggest Debian over Xubuntu if you've got less than 1GB of 
RAM and want easy package management.  I've found it to be much, much 
leaner in general.  Another option that I've had very good luck with for 
resource usage is Gentoo.  Once it's set up, I've found updates to be 
much more stable than Ubuntu.

Other things I'd suggest:

1. Don't use GDM.  Use SLiM instead.  Resources are fairly minimal and 
it still looks reasonably good.

2. Don't use Network Manager.  Too many dependencies.  Use Wicd instead.

3. For anything you use that requires GTK, find an alternative.  The 
dependencies are a serious memory hog.  For anything that you need that 
uses it, don't start it on boot.

4. XFCE's my desktop environment of choice, but look into other window 
managers like IceWM while watching your memory consumption.  You might 
like what you find.

5. If you need a lot of things that rely on GTK, ignore everything else 
on this list and just use GNOME.  Believe it or not, I've found you end 
up with lower memory consumption due to GTK programs pretty much loading 
all of the same junk regardless, so you now have that plus whatever 
other desktop environment you loaded.

6. If you're going to go with Ubuntu over Debian, don't start with 
Ubuntu Desktop.  Don't start with Xubuntu.  Start with Ubuntu Server and 
add as few XFCE (or other desktop environment) packages as you can get 
away with.  Xubuntu's chock full of more junk to make it useful out of 
the box than you probably need under the assumption that the average 
person has RAM to spare.  Debian doesn't seem to have as big of a 
problem in this regard.

7. Do regular package audits.  Updates/upgrades like to install extra 
junk you don't need.  If you've got a small hard drive, you can free up 
a lot of space by removing stuff you've never heard of.

IIRC my system booted into a full XFCE desktop with 128MB of RAM and I 
was able to run Firefox (another memory hog) in an actual useful manner 
in under 256MB.  That was with Xubuntu, so I'm sure I could have pushed 
it further if I had switched to another distro.  Gentoo's awesome in 
that regard - I used to run with about 150MB of usage with programs 
running.  I've since added more stuff (Bluetooth, Compiz, preloaded 
filesystem cache, etc.) and am up to probably 500MB-ish, but I don't 
think it's ever needed as much RAM as any of the Ubuntu variants for the 
same amount of functionality.

- Kyle

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