Why does it need that much hard disk space?

[Toby Fisher]

On Wed, 8 May 2002, Ann Parsons wrote:

> Hi Buddy,
>
> Nope, you explained it very well indeed.  Now, care to take the next
> step, which I am not knowledgeable enough to try?  Send a short list
> of the things that are *really* needed in a Linux installation.

Well guys, while your suggestions are great, I would like to add some
things.

First, I think Chris said that his space is limitted.  Also, I believe his
first question was basically which distribution to go for.  Given his hd
space restriction, I do not believe that Redhat, with its limitted
installation options, is the best option here, since the workstation
option does not contain several key packages, and the server install will
be too large.  I would recommend Slackware.  First of all, it is possible
to specify the packages required in several ways, and it can be simply
done to save quite a lot of space.

For example:
When presented with a list of categories, (disk sets of old) you should
choooose the following:

Select the a series, you need that, can under no circumstances do with out
it:
You can also select the defaults in the ap series, as well as the d
series.
Unless you really want Emacs for emacs-speak or other additions, you can
ignore this one and uncheck it entirely.
You'll want the f series, and the k series, as well as the n series.
The t series, well I'm not sure so installed it anyway, the x, xd, kde, g
and xap series you don't want because these are responsible for the
Xwindows system, which is not currently accessible.  Finally there's the y
series, which is a load of games and other small utils, it's only about 12
mb so you might as well go for it.

I've recently done this install myself on my lap top, I don't think it's
over 500 mb and I won't have to add to it much.  When you get to the
prompting options, choose the option to install groups of packages and
just press enter at each category to accept the defaults, and while
they're installing you can read a little about each package.  If you
select install everything, even if you've not selected all categories, it
will install everything, about 1.9 gb.  Imho it's the only annoying
feature of the Slackware install utility.

Oh yes, and Slackware includes a speakup-enabled kernel from which you can
make a boot disk on the cdrom.
Oh yes, and I almost forgot, if that all seems too complicated, and you
want to keep your Windoze system around for a while, you could always
install zipspeak, which expands to about 100 megs.

 Good luck.

-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby at g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
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