How to install an Ubuntu-Desktop on low memory systems

(Pentium II and III Processor, 32-256 MB RAM)

by Ingo LANTSCHNER (ingo@binonabiso.com)

Thomas HINTERBERGER contributed a chapter, which details how to install iceWM on Debian-Sarge; scroll to the end of this document, if you want to
see it.

Last updated: 26 Feb 2005

IMPORTANT: This document has been written for Ubuntu Warty - so it is somehow outdated. Well, we have done some additions for Hoary but probably
you'll find better guides in these days. Here are some (we have not tested them!):

Update June 2007: Most intersting is the Xubuntu-Distribution. Check it out at http://www.xubuntu.org. It runs fine with 64 MB of RAM.

Ubuntu installs by default with the Gnome Desktop and other memory-intensive applications. So if you do not have a fast and powerful machine (Pentium 4
and 512 MB of RAM) your system will be quite slow. The following document explains the steps, how to install Ubuntu and a GUI on a low memory system,
so that you can use it as a Workstation for your daily work. It is aimed to the average SOHO-user (Small Office/Home Office).

Screenshot (Click to enlarge)

Conventions:

Type command as root (you can do a sudo su- before, in order to get the root-prompt. Or you put sudo before the command

Type command as user.

Red text Parts which should be improved. Please let me know, if you have usefull suggestions.
Get Ubuntu CD-ROM see http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

After inserting the CD-ROM into the drive, boot and when asked to press Enter, type before. (Not !)
Hint for Hoary; In the Hoary installer there is no 'custom' install option. It appears they've replaced it with 'server' which is a minimum install.

The result will be a minimal-system with less than 300 MB on the HD and only a textprompt (no GUI).

I did it in the following order, but probably the order is not important:

$ sudo su - This puts you into a root-shell (#), so no more sudo is necesary.

(If you are not familiar with vi you can use nano or any other texteditor instead.)
Enable the universe-repository by removing the Hashmarks (=# (2 times))

The result is a system with X and iceWM as windowmanager. You log in as user and on the prompt:

starts the GUI. (After the first reboot, xdm autostarts and puts you directly into the GUI-mode)

So far this system needs 468 MB on your harddrive.

From Frank Martelli [frank at foodsavvy dot com]: Just a note when dealing with the ppc version of Ubuntu -- for some
reason, icewm (silently) requires /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3. A very frustrating bug, as X starts lets you login and then (without any errors)
returns to the login screen.
Solution:
ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3

We consider a Mailreader, Webbrowser, PDF-Reader and Officesuite as basic:

PDF-Reader

This adds 26 MB to the harddrive (compared to 3,2 MB of gPDF, but gPDF laks crucial features like search and copy of text.)

Mozilla
We include Flashplayer and Acrobat-Plugin for optimal compatibility with todays WWW. (The plugins only need 2,5 MB)

Fills up the harddrive to 555MB

Officesuite
At the date of writing this Howto you have two options. Choose one of them (either-or, not both!). This will probably change constantly, as OpenOffice
envolves - but the principle will stay the same (just the versions will change).
Either: Install OpenOffice 1.1.2 from apt-repository

This installs Openoffice 1.1.2

Or: Install OpenOffice 1.1.3 from OpenOffice.org:

I installed OpenOffice 1.1.3 from the tar, provided by www.openoffice.org. After untaring the tree I cd into the tree and type:

3.3 Final thoughts

Finally we have now 770 MB for the bare system on the harddrive, so if we consider to have 128 MB minimum for the swap, we need harddrives between 1
and 1,5 GB for such Ubuntu-Desktops.

Application Installation Size on HD

openssh-server (sshd) 594 kB

gthumb 60,2 MB

Acrobat Reader 26 MB

gpdf 3,2 MB

(Warning: gpdf has no search-feature and you can not copy&paste parts of
text out of PDFs)

OOo, German Language Pack 18,6 MB

OOo, German Help 23,5 MB

CUPS Daemon 23,6 MB

CUPS-Manager 1,6 kB

Printerdrivers 22 MB
(This is too much - any ideas how to reduce this?!)

The Gimp 40,5 MB

cdrecord 1,2 MB

mkisofs 860 kB

nedit (Editor) 3,3 MB

alicq (ICQ-Client) 7,8 kB

gaim (ICQ-Client) 18,4 MB

guitar (Dateikomprimierer) 3,3 MB

zip und unzip 550 kB

rdesktop 320 kB

tsclient (Graphisches Frontend für 940 kB

rdesktop und VNC)

cdrtoaster 106 kB

Does not work yet!

Simple cdrx 5,1 MB

Does not work yet !

gtoaster 6 MB

Does not work yet!

xine-ui (Multi Media Player) 12 MB

w32codecs 28,4 MB

MPlayer 18,3 MB

Does not work yet!

7,3 MB

11 MB

mc (Midnightcommander, 5 MB
Filemanager)

emelfm (Filemanager) 582 kB

Backup

Find a working frontend for cdrecord.

Find a working Mplayer-package.

If we go down to 64 or 32 MB of RAM we won't install OpenOffice. I recommend Abiword and Gnumeric instead. Also the Mozialla web broser could be a
problem on such systems. Better to go with Firefox and Thunderbird/Pine.

If we compare Ubuntu's ability to adapt to low-memory-systems with Fedora we will be surprised:

 Installation-Typ Fedora Core 3 [MB] Ubuntu 4.10 [MB]

Minimal standard 571 298

Minimal trimmed (see http://www.simpaticus.com/linux) 430 ??

w/ X, iceWM ?? 450

w/ Mozilla ?? add. 58

w/ OpenOffice 1.1.3 ?? add. 184

Install and configure Ubuntu: http://ubuntuguide.org/

Installing Low-Memory-Systems: http://www.rule-project.org

Please send comments and Feedback to ingo@binonabiso.com.

by Thomas HINTERBERGER

After installing, I had the feeling, that the Debian Icewm has some problems with the Ubuntu System (tar was not working, the same with Acroread and
OpenOffice - the paths looked different). Not knowing Icewm very well, I just decided to start from a Debian Netinstall CD-Image (even floppy-disks are
possible - you download it from www.debian.org ). It is very small - including X with Icewm 298 MB. I think, that Icewm works better with the original
Debian - after installation all programs was working immediately (but perhaps it is just the newer Version of Icewm - 2.20 - you also get Firefox 1.0, Mozilla
1.7.5 and gimp 2.2)

you can follow the guide from Ingo - I will note only the steps you have to add.

after installation you have no "sudo su"- so just type su and the root-password to get root.

add the follwing lines to your sources.list

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sarge main

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian-non-US/ sarge/non-US main
deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sarge main
deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian-non-US/ sarge/non-US main

# netselect-apt finds the most quick of all Debian-mirrors.

after # apt-get install xterm you add

when you are now the first time in Icewm, verify with emelfm or with the shell, that there is a file /etc/sudoers - if not, you have to reboot. - rootshell: #
shutdown -r now
after rebooting you should now be able to use all commands, when you press strg+alt+del. If you don't do this, you have to write all the time # shutdown -r
now to a rootshell, to shut down the system proper.

instead of this, you can edit /etc/sudoers, but only with the command

!!!! don't use another editor !!!!- for visudo: strg o = saving, strg x = exit

you should have the following lines:

root ALL=(ALL) ALL

[username] ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown, /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/halt, /sbin/reboot, /bin/cdrecord
The rest is the same like in Ingos description - the only thing - I would use bluefish instead of nedit - it is 4 MB more, but you have a wonderful HTML -
Editor.

The configuration of X is not as good and comfortable, as with Ubuntu - I did a little trick: run the Ubuntu live CD or Knoppix (if you have only 64MB, you
have to do a swap partition before - I did not test it with Ubuntu, but Knoppix runs with 64MB) - make the screen and fonts well looking- copy the /etc/X11
/XF86Config-4 from the live CD to a disk (or mail it), bring it to your /home directory in Icewm- save your existing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

with my system, it was working perfect (both - Knoppix-config and Ubuntu-config)

one more tip: emelfm is working as a file browser, like Nautilus or Konqueror - it is not visible from the first moment, it is hard to configure, but it does.

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