Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Comparing Debian Netinstall with MSDOS

v 0.2
15Feb12

Why would I bother comparing Debian Netinstall with MSDOS?  Sounds silly - HOWEVER - when you look at it in a historical perspective, it is quite interesting.  This has no secret how-to at the end, I was simply thinking this morning when I was doing my 3k walk ... "isn't that cool" ....

In the '80s, MSDOS was king.  You got to pay good money to get a box and some diskettes that had a single user operating system that you could add to to get anything useful done.  Of course, if you were keen, you had the batch language and GWBASIC, but that was pretty much it.
  • If you wanted, you could pay more good money and get Turbo-Pascal, or MS-Basic or some other compiled language.
  • Perhaps you'd like to spend some more money and buy QNX - a multi-user system (that I think still exists).
  • How about a DOS Markup Text processing language?
Now, Debian Netinstall (doesn't matter whether it is Squeeze or Wheezy, the principle is the same) - you get to download it for free.  Looking at what you get in what is considered today to be "a bootstrap loader" for the real system - well we are smothered in riches and don't even know it.
  • You get the same sort of screen those MS-DOS users got, except you have Bash - a powerful programming language in its own right - but that is the SHELL!   
  • zip/unzip .. bzip .. grep ... awk ... wow!
  • Multi-User / Multi-tasking out of the box.
  •  Not happy with Bash?  How about Perl?  Pretty hard to beat that!
  • Typesetting?  Groff.  At least as powerful as those systems you paid good money for, but .. yes .. it's free.
  • No edline here - Vim.  You may laugh, however Vim is a pretty damn powerful editor.  But if you don't like that, how about Nano - still better than anything MS included at that time.
 There's more, but you get my drift ..



Later ...

Monday, February 6, 2012

Debian - Memory Footprints

v 0.2

Over the last few days, I've been having some fun working out exactly what you can do with the Debian netinstall ISO image.  It doesn't really matter whether you use the Squeeze or Wheezy image, the memory footprints will be about the same.

For the record, I've been using Virtualbox to look at these results.
  • In a text-only system as described earlier you could do useful work in under 32 meg.
  • With Xorg and a simple window manger like Openbox, Fluxbox, Fvwm or the like, 64 meg.
  • Xfce 128 meg
Remember, these memory footprints are minimums ... I had an Openbox session using 28 meg - then I opened Iceweasel and it went to 60 meg.  Even a terminal session will add 5 meg to your memory requirements.

Now we come to more complex stuff.  A Linux system has many processes operating in the background and the memory observations above probably simplify that a little too much.

So, a broad observation:
  • 1 gig ... use KDE or Gnome if you like (they are not for me)
  • 512 meg .. Xfce
  • 256 meg ... Xfce will do, but you will have more fun with Lxde / Openbox / Window Maker
  • 128 meg .. Openbox / Window Maker / Fluxbox / Fvwm will make you happy.
  • 64 meg ... Same as above but you will just have to be frugal.
  • 32 meg .. restricted use of window mangers or use the command line (ie no Xorg)
Enjoy




Later ...........

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Debian - Netinstall + Window Manager

v 0.4.7

Subsequent to my last post about the Netinstall as a console system, I experimented with installing Xorg and a Window Manger.

" aptitude install xserver-xorg wdm wmaker xterm "

as I found when I did the initial install, xterm was not installed and this made it all very difficult.

18 meg unpacked ... reboot and works like a charm.  Now, having given the example, you could insert gdm3 or slim instead of wdm and fluxbox or whatever instead of wmaker.  I simply did this as an experiment.

Since we are talking about Window Maker as a manager, here is a description as to how to configure it ...

http://maketecheasier.com/create-a-great-window-maker-desktop/2009/02/14


Later .....

Update Monday 6 Feb (just after shaking my head in wonder at how you get to the Superbowl, then get caught out putting 12 men on the field .....)

I also installed Fluxbox and Fvwm.  Both seems to have improved default values these days - but I also installed Conky from the repositories.

Netinstall + X + Window manager (Fvwm) + conky .... under 35 meg memory useage!  And this from a standard Debian install - just choosing what you run.

Others (approx):
  • Fvwm   34 meg
  • Fluxbox  32 meg
  • Window Maker  28 meg
  • Openbox-Session 24 meg
  • Add 5 meg for each terminal
By way of comparison, the Wheezy Xfce install I did previously uses just on 92mb.

    Later....

    Debian - What is Netinstall Made Of?

    v 0.2

    Let us say that you are a curious person and you decided to do a Debian Netinstall (Squeeze or Wheezy, it matters not), but when you reached the "tasksel" screen you unchecked everything, so that nothing further would be installed.  What sort of system would you end up with?

    Well, it's actually not a bad console system.  Obviously there is no X, however you can start it up, and log in to a console.  Apt is set up with appropriate sources.list and you have Internet capability.

    If you want to list the packages, then:
          " dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt "

    as root will place a list of installed packages into the file " selections.txt " in the root account.

    Of course, if you want use this principle to duplicate what you have on one Debian install onto another, then you update the package database of installed packages with:
            " dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt "
    Once again as root, before doing an Aptitude update and upgrade.

    Now, looking through the packages in  " selections.txt " the included ones that caught my eye were:
    • The complete Dpkg / Apt / Aptitude toolset
    • bash
    • gcc
    • gnupg
    • groff
    • gzip
    • mawk
    • nano
    • perl
    • sed
    • tar
    • vim
    • wget
    In its own right, this represents quite a capable system, three programming languages, a typesetting system, excellent text editor, encryption, backup and an awk text reporting language.  Not bad and certainly fun.


    Expanding the System

    As part of the netinstall setup, the apt sources.list was configured for your preferred country, and even though this is only for the "main" sections, that is perfectly adequate if we wish to build our own custom Linux system.  We don't have a graphical client like synaptic, but we have the Debian tools we can use.  Aptitude provides a consistent front end to the Apt and Dpkg tools.

    "  aptitude search xorg | more "

    will return a list of those packages that are to do with xorg.  You can repeat the process with any search criteria you like to have a look at available packages you might like to install.

    To show details of a particular package you are interested in:

    " aptitude show xserver-xorg "

    You are now well on your way to installing Xorg to your machine.  To find a graphical login manager, try:

    "  aptitude search x-display-manager "

    and you'll be shown a number of packages on the last line that you might like to look at.  Likewise, you can look at window managers, desktops or whatever you like.


    Conclusion

    I haven't set out to provide a definitive set of instructions here, but to show what you can do when given a minimal system and the sorts of things you might like to poke around with.  With some care you can have just the packages you want, and a slim, fast setup.


    Later ............

    CrunchBang

    v 0.2.7

    A couple of nights ago, I was sitting in the bar at my hotel in Melbourne whilst consuming my accumulated drink vouchers, when an elderly lady who had clearly been enjoying the hospitality of the establishment started randomly haranguing groups of patrons as to the greatness of John Oppenheimer.  This enjoyable "impromptu theatre" was terminated when she was quietly led away.

    What has this to do with the subject?  Everything.  Mr Oppenheimer was one of the major contributors to the ultimate "CrunchBang" at the aptly named "Trinity Site".  So CrunchBang stuck in my mind and the more I read about it, the more I liked it (the Linux Distro that is).

    This minimalist distro is built directly upon a Debian Squeeze Netinstall and uses the Openbox window manager.  The Debian Backports and a Crunchbang repository are also used.  It is installed using a modified Debian Installer script, and like Ubuntu and a few other distros, the sudo command is used for administrator privileges.  A "cb-welcome" bash script enables additional functionality to be installed, however I found it failed when the technique to detect an internet connection simply wouldn't work.  Iceweasel release (the latest) is included along with Flash.

    I installed it in Virtualbox just as described in a previous post, though with a smaller "disk" and less memory.

    This is definitely not a beginner-friendly distro.  Straight up, editing of the sources.list is needed to tailor it for closer Debian repositories, and commenting out the "check-internet-connection" line in the "/usr/bin/cb-welcome" script is needed.  Simple, but a show-stopper for many.

    HOWEVER

    I REALLY like Crunchbang.  Why?  Crunchbang is built the way I think many more distros should be built that expand or modify a parent distro (in this case Debian Stable).  It uses the parent distro as a base and modifies it with additional repositories and scripts.  At all times you can go back and use the documentation of the parent distro.  This is truly using the "standing on the shoulders of giants" technique and benefits both the user and the Distro maintainer by (in this case) using what Debian has provided and improving just what needs to be tidied up for what that person wants.  No re-invented wheels needed.



    Later .....

    Update:
    The initial install uses 70 meg memory at idle and just under 1.9 gig disk space.

    Update 11 Feb.
    I encourage you to visit the Crunchbang support forums.  There are some really good posts with some great advice for modifying systems (how to for Xfce for example) or setup Conky (which I've become somewhat enamoured with).
    In addition, Openbox has started to grow on me.  Combined with the Debian Menu system it is really quite slick.