How big is a Linux Distro?

I just got a new to me R60e and I'm planning on making it my Linux Box. I'm going to try Mint, but I'm familiar with Ubuntu too. I got a 16GB SSD to use as the boot drive, but I'm wondering how big the boot partition is and if there's anything I can do to make it smaller after installation? Ideally, if I could get it down to 4GB or less, then I could have my Mp3s on there and still be less than half full. Thanks for any help.

 

With all the bells and whistles installed Mint 11 takes 2.9 GB. The others can tell you how to get it leaner, still not in their league. Btw you'll love Mint 11 it's awesome.

 

These disk formatting tips for getting started with linux will let you fit a few distros on your SSD (based upon my understanding since I only installed one distro using this method).

It appears the ISO for MintOS is now one DVD in size.

How can you fit many distros in a tiny space? Smaller distributions exist which are 'optimized' for old computers and are often called Lightweight Linux distributions.

As I see linux distros, each flavour bundles a kernel with core applications (e.g. ls, top, du, df, bash) as well as a selection of other useful applications. Most often a graphical environment is included, such as Xwindow, and then some kind of window manager is provided. A separate concept is the desktop environment. Quoting the desktop environment page: Some window managers such as IceWM, Fluxbox and Window Maker contain rudimentary desktop environment elements, while others like evilwm and wmii do not. Try a few and you'll understand better. (You can have one load by default and then reload X using a different window manager.. so you'll default to something you like on days you do not experiment.)

That selection of other useful applications is what will really eat up your disk space. For example, are you content with a text editor, or do you need a word processor (or a whole office suite), typesetting (e.g. (La)TeX), or desktop publishing program, too? You can add the open-source software you like to use, or want to try, through a package manager at any time after installation.

 

Mint is about 3gb like rod said, debian is very small using the netinstaller (of course, it comes with almost no packages for home use). Debian live is quite small too, 700mb on a USB probably expands to about 2.5 installed.

Ubuntus default install is about 7.5gb.

 

There are also distributions that could be as big as you want them to be, for example, Arch Linux.

 

A good way to keep things small is removing unused packages. I'm not too familiar with mint but I assume that it is a similar process.

Ubuntu comes with a whole bunch of graphics drivers for a wide rang of hardware, but you only need the one for your hardware and 'vesa' driver- incase something goes wrong. This is a matter of figuring which card you have and figuring which driver you need for it.

Another good way is removing old kernels.-
When the kernel is updated the older versions are kept. This in case of a regress for a particular piece of hardware or some sort of other incomparability. Once the new kernel is tested then the older ones can be removed. HowTo: Remove Old Ubuntu Kernels

Another way is to remove the swap partition, but I would only do this if you can be absolutely certain that you wont need it. Like 16gb of ram on a computer that only serfs the web. But this isn't recommended.

Remove all the programs you don't need. They are easy enough to get back and how often does the average user need everything that a distro comes with?

Removing all the pretty-making packages like gnome or kde and using a smaller gui would also help, but again, this is a little extreme and I personally like the pretty things kde has to offer.

Hope this helps!

 

win !

 

Unless you go for a real heavyweight like Sabayon 16GB will be plenty of space for any distribution.
But if you want it really small, try Tinycore!
Tiny Core Linux, Micro Core Linux, 10MB Linux GUI Desktop, Live, Frugal, Extendable

If you really want to stick with Ubuntu (I wouldn't*) try the alternate installer, skip the desktop task in tasksel and build your custom desktop from scratch without all the useless bloat.

*) I don't see any reason anymore to use or recommend Ubuntu nowadays unless you are a fan of Unity. Mint or Debian (depending on the task) is always the better choice imho.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

How long is a train? LOL

j/k ZaZ !

 

Wrong, it's about the same as Mint's.

 

It all depends on what you're doing with the box.

My X40 is basically just a front-end for streaming media on my living room sound system. It runs an install of Debian that's about 200 MB or so: a minimal install with Xorg, the jukebox, some net config tools, and SSH.

My NSLU2 runs an embedded Linux, and the root partition fits on 32 MB of flash with room to spare.

 

How did you get it that small? debootstrap?
Would you mind sharing your package list?