Debian on old old system

I'm installing debian on an old laptop 500Mhz, 128MB ram...
1) Can anyone recommed a site which has a list of packages suitable for such a system ? I'll install fluxbox window manager. How about a lean mean web browser ? Other lean mean variants of common programs ?

2)During install, I selected "desktop" as a system use, now its installing a bunch of gnome packages.
If I only use fluxbox, will this affect system performace ? Even if I log into fluxbox, it will be using gdm.
How do I uninstall the gnome stuff ? I assume I can only do that after I install fluxbox (as I want a display) ?

Any other tips on configuring debian for this antique system ?

 

In terms of installation, your only concern with gnome libraries is the disk space they use. If you don't run gnome, or no applications you use make use of the gnome apps or libraries, then they will just sit there doing nothing. The only reason this wouldn't be true is if your desktop (fluxbox, XFCE, ion3 if you're hardcore) pre-links. I don't believe any of the ones that I mention do this.

One other thing I would recommend is to check out all of the services that are turned on by default and keep them to a minimum (look int /etc/rc.d/). Various services that you will not be using, maybe samba or print servers should be turned off.

I run XFCE on a 400MHz celeron laptop with no problems. Firefox works fine, though opera is snappier. If you really want lean and mean, stick with links or w3m

I would suggest you use XDM rather than GDM for your desktop login, it's simpler and faster. If you stop gdm, then apt-get remove it, then apt-get xdm, I think it will "just work". I honestly don't recall, it's been so long since I installed debian (apt-get dist-upgrade is sweet).

 

Ah, thanks
Disk space is no problem, ram is.

I installed fluxbox, it does not seem to be using any gnome libraries.

I want to check if the display is 16 bit, and if not set it to be 16 bit or lower. Any idea how I would do that ?

 

You're in for a surprise: A recent Linux distro will work on that system without major issue. It'll be a little slow and a little cramped, but it'll run fine.

I would not install a full Gnome or KDE desktop, as that will just uselessly eat your resources. Instead I would try Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop, which is rather more frugal. Even more frugal but very useful is WindowMaker, which has been around almost forever. And if you want to get exceptionally spartan and cryptic, there's wmii and ion3.

Using straight Firefox shouldn't present any major problem. As long as you don't load up on daemons, you should be just fine. About all I'd suggest is making certain you establish a swap partition on the machine -- say 500M -- for when you inevitably overflow real RAM.

Schwab

 

The command xdpyinfo will tell you this, but I don't precisely know how to interpret the output :-(.

Changing your display to default to 16-bit color is a bit easier. Edit the config file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, look in the section labelled 'Section "Screen"', and look for an entry named 'DefaultDisplayDepth'. It usually gets set to 24. Change it to 16. Write the file back out and restart X.

Schwab

 

I installed debian, Xubuntu is anyway based on that. I also installed the fluxbox window manager, its also in the frugal category.
Debian is good

 

Can I change it to say 14 ?
If I do, will I have to add anything to the xorg.config file ?
Right now, below the DefaltDepth line, there are a bunch of sections which go like this:
Subsection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes .....

If I have 14 as a default, do I need to add a similar subection like
SubSection "Dislplay"
Depth 14
Modes ....

 

*giggle* No. Nice try, though. You can have 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32. (24 is often mapped internally to 32.) 1, 2, 4, and 8 are color-mapped. 16, 24, and 32 are direct color.

Schwab

 

Bu my xorg.conf file has a 15 bit mode in it ?

 

I've never heard of bit depths beyond those given by ewhac. To save some memory, use 16-bit depth instead of 24. 8-bits is yucky, and the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is minimal. Since everything is 8-bit aligned, using 14 or 15 bits wouldn't do anything to save memory anyways.

 

So why was a 15 bit mode already present in this installation ? Actually I've seen 15 bit modes in other distros too

 

You're quite right; I stand corrected. (I should know this stuff; I used to write graphics device drivers.)

15 bit pixels are RGB555 -- that is, five bits each for red, green, and blue intensities, for a total of 32768 colors (the leftover bit is either ignored or used for a one-bit alpha channel). This is popular because each color gun is the same width. However, RGB555 shows color banding very easily. But by adding an extra bit of resolution to the green gun, yielding RGB565, the banding problem is improved significantly. And it also fits nicely into a 16-bit word.

RGB565 has almost completely displaced RGB555 in modern graphics cards. But older chips still have it. Hence, the entry in your xorg.conf.

Schwab

 

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation.