Dropping lightweight distro after lightweight distro…
As my readers must know, I am now basically on Windows XP, especially on the (relatively new and cheap, but OK) laptop, except for some Solaris and Linux at work and with the hosting of this blog. Nevertheless, I am bothered by the old (antiquated?) laptop who refuses to die (except for the battery), and which I refuse to abandon, mostly because it has a keyboard that’s still 1,000% better than any keyboard that you can find today in a laptop, no matter how much would it cost!
So, what do I do with my HP Omnibook XE3 (Celeron-128k at 850 MHz, 256 MB RAM PC-100)? It used to fly with Win98 SE, it was very slow with Win2k, it was bearable win WinXP, it was not fast enough with Debian Sarge and CentOS-4 with GNOME 2.8, etc. etc., and in the end it was put back to WinXP. Still, it’s not fast enough. No version of GNOME is fast enough on it, possibly because nowadays distros are eating CPUs for nothing even in the kernel. XFCE is better, but less than you’d expect (Wolvix 1.1.0 had the best XFCE for it, in terms of speed). As for KDE, only Sidux managed to give me a fast desktop — but I can’t use something that is supposed to break if you keep it updated, just because it’s “unstable”.
I explored some chances to get something Linux back on this 8-y.o. laptop.
Not an easy task, really. I am now pissed of by a lot of things:
- distros not having enough packages (e.g. RHEL and clones);
- distros not being supported for long enough (e.g. Fedora);
- distros not being reliable enough (e.g. Ubuntu);
- distros not supporting JFS (or even XFS, but definitely not ext3);
- distros that are “ugly by design” (e.g. Vector);
- the “megafreeze” concept of most of the distro;
- the “look at me, I’m rolling-release and I can crash after each update” concept of some other distros (because in a given Linux distro & release you can’t support SIMULTANEOUSLY both GIMP 2.4 and 2.6, this is how stupid they are — yes, in Windows you can);
- the distros where you can NOT get the source packages, no matter what (say, Zenwalk and Puppy);
- the “too much choice” which is actually “no choice” when ALL of the distros are having serious flaws;
- the “too much choice” which is actually “no choice” when ALL of the desktop environments and window managers are highly incomplete in functionality;
- the annoyances with the “restricted codecs and libs”;
- the annoyances with X.Org becoming worse and worse;
- KDE4, PulseAudio, etc. etc.
I pondered over the weekend. And I pondered. And I’ve read a few things…
For some reason, I’ve read Improved Linux Screen Space Management With PekWM, by Caitlyn Martin (I don’t always agree with her, but she normally knows what she’s talking about). I constantly try to “adopt” an extremely lightweight window manager, but I never manage to fall in love with one. Speaking of the second screenshot in the article, I failed to grasp the concept of usefulness in the idea of tabbing several windows in a single window (the web browser in that case).
Then, I went into Linux Performance: Different Distributions, Very Different Results, . That was a very interesting reading, which led me to another one of Caitlyn’s: VL-Hot: A Non-polling Alternative To HAL. This was extremely interesting, as the limitations of VL-Hot in automounting are negligible, whereas the main advantage over HAL is that it doesn’t continuously poll the hardware!
Still, I consider Vector Linux as an ugly distro. Although… who knows… based on Caitlyn’s insistence, maybe I’ll give a try to Vector 6. I noticed from this screenshot that they seem to default to a transparent background for the desktop icons’ text in XFCE (it’s simple, actually, but it’s hidden somewhere in a README file), and their latest XFCE desktop is less ugly than usual, but their Light edition is still not so good-looking IMO.
To give XFCE a last chance, I tried to install Linux Mint 6 XFCE CE. It’s elegant and it too uses transparent background for desktop labels. Unfortunately, for my given antique laptop (remember, that Celeron is only having 128kB of cache, and the RAM is PC-100!), the installer was so slow, that I feared it would take hours to complete! 256 MB of RAM is unacceptably low for a graphical installer in a Live system, and they don’t have any “alternate CD”, so I had to drop Mint. I loved the previous version with the newer laptop, but that one had 1 GB of RAM.
I quickly assessed a few recent distros. wattOS beta2 (which didn’t liked the Radeon 9200 of my desktop PC) is actually Ubuntu Intrepid. It features a rather decent LXDE, but for some reason I still don’t click. Oh, and the installer is also Ubuntu’s, GUI-only.
As I have played repeatedly with Wolvix 2.0.0 Beta1, I obviously tried to decide on using it for this antique laptop. The installer is known to me from 1.1.0. I played again with XFCE, Openbox and Fluxbox from the LiveCD, and I failed to decide what I like the most. I explored the package repository and I saw nice things there, yet I wasn’t extremely impressed. Maybe it’s my current depression… or maybe is it because I don’t see the corresponding source packages?!
igElle PC/Desktop, a strange new distro. Too strange. First of all, I’ve found annoying the top panel: it needs an extra click to close a menu, once you open it but you don’t click on any item. And the bottom panel, which includes the window list and the workspace switcher, is set to autohide. I couldn’t change that. Then, I had to explicitly add a new connection in Igelle Connector (GUI) to have network (DHCP, wired). Finally, it uses the bloody shitty PulseAudio, which somehow fails to see the internal microphone connected to the old ESS1988 Allegro-1 audio card! A 2.6.27.19 kernel with a recent technology (if PA is really a technology and not a diarrhea), and no microphone in a 8-y.o. laptop! The CD went to the trash.
Trying to get in love with LXDE, I downloaded debian-live-500-i386-lxde-desktop.iso. Unfortunately, this LXDE desktop is uglier than expected, and that bloody Debian network bug is still there: eth0 was not added to /etc/network/interfaces, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get any network unless I manually issued “dhclient eth0“. This is ridiculous. I’m pretty sure /etc/network/interfaces will be wrong even after a normal install (I’ve experienced that before with Lenny while frozen but unreleased), so I decided it makes no sense to install it via debian-500-i386-xfce+lxde-CD-1.iso — they’re not able to fix an elementary bug, or rather they don’t care, so why should I care?
To GNOME or not to GNOME? A recurrent question in my case. I wouldn’t use GNOME 2.26 (from the stable distros, only Zenwalk has it, should it qualify for the name of “stable”), but here’s a regression with it: Gnome volume control regressions — Mandriva Bug #49045, Red Hat Bug #491372. This is simply OUTRAGEOUS — there is no way to change the sound level of the system beep in the new control, and somewhere else it was also said that without PA this GNOME release would simply have no sound at all! —, and I’m afraid that, if Red Hat is not taking this lobotomy for what it is, they will release some day RHEL6 as the biggest shit ever, second best to Vista!
Since I’ve mentioned Zenwalk 6 GNOME, I’ll have to add that I still couldn’t find any source repository (maybe they build it out of thin air), and generally speaking, I don’t understand their development model: they seem to be rolling-release, with the release numbers only given to be able to release something, but otherwise you have to track current to get updated packages!
Frugalware 1.0 might have been a recommendation of some readers. After all, it has a big number of packages, and I suppose they have several window managers etc. I remembered though that they support a release even less than the Fedora guys: right after a new release is issued, the previous one is not supported anymore! 6 months for support… they must be nuts, right?
No, no Arch Linux whatsoever. Unless they’ll bloody include a full X environment on the CD, and also to add support in the installer…
As I skipped Debian, I’ll also skip Parsix 2.0, no matter it has a different installer (less intelligent, but it doesn’t screw the network) and a newer GNOME (2.24 vs. 2.20). I can’t explain what are my feelings about Parsix: Alan did a great job as always, but for the time being I feel no impetus to install it on the old laptop. (I used an older version of it on the newer laptop, and it was pretty good.)
After having read the latest DWW, I decided that I don’t share Tiny Core’s principles (namely, the so-called preventing of the “system rot” and ensure starting from a pristine state), and also that DSL is unusable because it’s run by jerks.
I also eliminated from my list SliTaz, because they only have in cooking Firefox 3.0.4. Their development seems to work by the principle called “randomness”, if you allow me to be mean.
Oh, for God’s sake, I was about to forget to mention it! DreamLinux 3.5 XFCE looked promising, because MKDistro EasyRemaster is supposed to allow for an easy remastering with an evel lighter WM taken from Debian repositories. To my deepest regret, with a good CD (verified), all I got after the boot was a kernel panic…
An then, a crazy idea occurred to me. I happened to reread about Scientific Linux 5.3, and most notably the Release Notes.
As opposed to CentOS (the most famous RHEL clone) and StartCom Linux AS (the fastes to come with a clone for 5.3), Scientific Linux has a few advantages:
- it’s the only RHEL clone to support a non-ext3 filesystem out of the box: it’s not JFS, but XFS, which is still acceptable for me (with CentOS it’s trickier, because you don’t have centosplus on the install media, and I’d also add that the kernels in centosplus are not updated in a timely manner!);
- it’s the only RHEL clone to offer a lightweight DE on the install media: unfortunately, it’s IceWM, which I don’t fancy very much, but I decided I want to give it a try;
- it’s the only RHEL clone to offer several unique additions on the install media: Intel wireless, madwifi, ndiswrapper, MP3 support (lame, libmad), and much more (not useful for this laptop, but good to know they’re there);
- it’s the only RHEL clone to offer several installable LiveCDs/LiveDVDs (currently still at version 5.2) featuring GNOME, KDE and IceWM (IceWM on the mini_livecd_SL52_2008-08-14.iso).
So my crazy idea was to install Scientific Linux with IceWM.
As I am too lazy to D/L the full CDs for SL5.3 (is IceWM on Disc 1, or should I perform a netinstall?), I used the smaller “mini LiveCD” for SL5.2 to perform the install.
To avoid the default ext3fs, I had to edit /usr/bin/livecd-install, and to change in “mkfs.ext3” with “mkfs.xfs -f“, and then in a second place “ext3” with “xfs” (for fstab).
After the install, I updated the system, I enabled Adobe, ATrpms, DAG (already present but not enabled by default), then I added a few things: yumex (damned slow thing!), leafpad, geany, meld, rar, fortune, gimp, gthumb (nobody offers GQview for RHEL5), gxine, vlc. UPDATE: I could/should have installed nedit, which is part of SL, but not on the mini-CD.
I missed a graphical file manager, and there are not enough intelligent people on planet Earth, so there is no build of PCManFM 0.5 for RHEL5, nor is it one of Xfe, at least (no Rox-Filer either).
However, it’s easy to add Xfe to a RHEL5 clone, even by using non-specific RPMs. I only needed fox-1.6.33-1.i386.rpm, and then xfe-1.19.2-1.i386.rpm, and it worked!
What are my current annoyances with this install, so far?
- I have to get used with the missing Alt+F2; by default, Winkey+Space shows a command line.
- The normal update 5.2->5.3 doesn’t automatically update the XFS module; that is, kernel-module-xfs-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686 is not pulled in, so booting the new kernel leads to a panic.
- I’d have to learn to customize IceWM.
- Without GNOME or KDE, is there a way to hibernate?
- There seems to be no keyboard layout switcher for IceWM (not even a layout indicator!), so I have to hack xorg.conf to use multiple keyboard layouts (as per here, where Niki adds his own sample).
- I have to find out how to bloody disable the autologin! This is an effect of not performing a normal (Anaconda) install, but I am dumb enough to fail to find which is the bloody line in some script that automatically logins sluser!
Now, what do I do? I am not satisfied with the result, albeit it’s indeed a fast system!
- Should I perform an official install of SL5.3, being it a netinstall using only Disc 1?
- Should I switch to WindowMaker, retrieved from EPEL?
- Should I use Opera (per user), to make it even less bloated?
- Should I switch to something else, such as (duh) Vector Linux? (It doesn’t know of JFS either, but it offers XFS, just like SL!) It does have both PCManFM and Xfe (in extra/x-apps), should I like its Light flavor in the end…
- Should I hope that Fedora 11 LXDE spin will be nicer than other LXDE distros? (For what reason?)
Or maybe I should first dig into SL’s mailing list for some answers, if any.
I’m hard to satisfy, even when it’s not for my main system. Anyway, this is one more proof that it’s impossible to find “the right distro”.
On the antiquated laptop, I don’t need to be able to run that much software, but on the new one I need to run a few commercial ones I’m not sure WINE would do (does Rybka 3 Aquarium work with WINE?!). So I’m not changing my mind with regards to my current platform, knowing that I’m not decided not even for the Omnibook.
Sigh.
Mar 24, 2009 at 00:42
> Without GNOME or KDE, is there a way to hibernate?
echo disk > /sys/power/state
Mar 24, 2009 at 00:59
I think LXDE has its own terrible network-manager which doesn't help anyone. I tried the same version as you and found it equally puzzling and unsatisfactory, though I have no issues with the Xfce flavour of the distro.
I think you have very great expectations and it will be a challenge, but not impossible, to have a modern OS on a laptop designed and suitable for Win 98. I think your biggest performance obstacle is the X server. I have a modern Core Duo laptop which by odd chances of circumstance I now run headless and control over ssh. It boots (rarely!) with about 25 MB RAM to basically run ssh server (other tasks too but on cronjobs) but I know if I install X and allow the wireless & bluetooth drivers to load that can be multiplied by 8 or 10 times. I would guess your laptop might boot to a minimal graphical environment with about 70 MB RAM and actually that leaves enough for real work to be done. For an out of the box solution I would look at antix (fluxbox Mepis derivative) because it has the Mepis and Debian repositories available and works very well. You'll also recall that Mepis do famously comply with licenses
Otherwise if it was my laptop I would probably be looking at Debian with a custom kernel, fluxbox and a software selection quite similar to Wolvix 1.* (I didn't try the new one yet). It would be time consuming to set up but no more so than trying 10 different distros.
Did you look at Tiny Core yet? It might be the right thing. It can be configured to use regular GNU utilities.
Mar 24, 2009 at 01:55
After installing Arch on my new HP mini I can say that it's too much work to set up everything. You wouldn't want to invest that kind of time for your old laptop, even if the distro itself can be very lightweight. If someone would take the time to make a lightweight Arch based distro it would be good, though…
Hibernating should be easy from a terminal. If pm-utils is available, something like "pm-hibernate" should work (else, you can always use "echo -n disk > /sys/power/state").
And regarding the HP mini, in case you think about getting one:
- Keyboard is as good as expected. At least for my small hands it's very comfortable.
- Screen is a mirror. It is good though (better than many laptops I've seen), but if you plan to use it outdoors think it twice. Indoors no problem.
- Quality for a sub 300 euro machine is surprisingly good.
- 10.2 inch screen is acceptable (pixels are bigger then a 12.1" laptop with 1280×800 resolution), but 600px height is slightly annoying (you get used quickly, though).
- The small 26wh battery is good for 3 hours, it seems.
- As for Linux support, I was disappointed to learn that the wifi adapter (broadcom 4315) needs a binary driver that's obviously not included in mainline kernel. Ubuntu (and probably other distros) have it already, though. Once I built the module it worked fine and the connection is rock solid. Sound does not work out of the box with mainline kernel either, but the ALSA maintainer told me that the fixes are in 2.6.29 already, so I decided to wait a few days instead of finding hacks to make it work now. All the rest works fine (suspend, hibernate, touchpad, webcam, ethernet, graphics,…)
- Overall, I like it. I look forward for b43 driver to support this WIFI adapter sooner than later, but apart from that everything is as expected (or better). Well, counting that sound will work in a few days with 2.6.29, of course…
Mar 24, 2009 at 03:07
Welcome back to Linux!
If I were you I'd install Slackware + LXDE. Slack is still faster than RHEL & clones; don't know about Vector.
Yes, Linux is crap, some/many things dont work out of the box etc etc, but at least you would have some tools installed on that laptop with a nice keyboard. Maybe enough to use it as a typewriter, mp3 player, even movie player, all that at a decent speed.
Mar 24, 2009 at 07:01
There's a Live Arch with X at http://chakra-project.org/
Mar 24, 2009 at 07:43
I use antiX-MEPIS in one of the laptop which matches your laptop's spec. But I know you couldn't agree with MEPIS choice of softwares.
You know you can't get perfect solution with old hardware. And being as perfectionist as you are, you can't even get any satisfaction with new hardwares/softwares/system.
Please Beranger, try Mac. I want to know your take on that one. I got plenty of knowledgeable friends who are now sounded like Mac fanboys, claiming the framework (Cocoa, etc etc) is way more advanced and above PC-based systems (Win and *Nix). In short, it's just like nirvana to them.
I (and I bet lot of your readers) would like to know if, in your opinion, it is the truth or hype.
Mar 24, 2009 at 09:57
Collective answer:
* 2 thanks, I was forgetting about /sys/power/state.
* Takla, MEPIS complies only by allowing you to buy a DVD with the sources. This is ridiculous. I've heard some good things of Antix, however I kinda dislike "derivatives of derivatives". I'm not sure what to think of it.
* Tiny Core doesn't fit my needs and principles. I would have rather go for SliTaz, but you can't trust they update not even such a commonplace application as Firefox. (SliTaz is indeed very light.)
* Luis, Broadcom sucks indeed, but I also agree that HP Mini seems to be the best choice for people who need a good keyboard (and a correct right Shift key). Many reviewers agree on that, thanks for your report confirming this.
* Lucian, why Slackware + LXDE, when it's more simple to use something like Vector Lite, should I want LXDE? (Vector and Wolvix are fast, I mean they seem faster than stock Slackware.) The problem is, I'd rather use Open/Flux/Blackbox/WindowMaker, because LXDE is nice, but still annoying (I'm easy to piss off). But I need hibernation ('cause the battery is broken), and it's easier to get hibernation outside Slackware.
* Rajat, isn't Chakra KDE4?
* Arturi, I can't buy a Mac just for the sake of trying it. And I don't like what seems to be the default theme in the bloody OS X (the red-orange-green bullets and whatnot). If I were a writer or a graphical artist, maybe I'd go for a Mac, but I'm not, and I have not win the lottery either…
Mar 24, 2009 at 12:54
I see that Absolute Linux still doesn't offer the source packages, which is annoying, as MOST of the packages on the CD(s) are NOT part of Slackware!
Once again, I can't use a distro which I know it's fast, only because Paul Sherman never thought to find a way to share the source packages…
Mar 24, 2009 at 12:56
the vicious circle…
it starts in hope, maybe dreams and ends in curses and …xp
my last victim was good old puppylinux (or was i the victim)
after reading your post i might try dreamlinux.
good luck with sl!
Mar 24, 2009 at 15:01
Béranger,
you might find useful (and very entertaining) reading at the marvelous blog of K. Mandla (http://kmandla.wordpress.com/) He uses low-end hardware on a daily basis and he has much to say about it running under Linux.
HTH
Mar 24, 2009 at 15:49
That's correct, thanks. I'll explore his blog (I've occasionally read it in the past). However, I won't go for something that needs too much customization. I won't go for Crux, Arch, and so on!
Mar 24, 2009 at 21:41
"No, no Arch Linux whatsoever. Unless they’ll bloody include a full X environment on the CD, and also to add support in the installer…"
I wouldn't like such annoying and pessimistic users in our community anyway.
Mar 24, 2009 at 21:48
"Community" is a too fancy word for the distros with large and over-vocal herds of users (*buntu, Arch, etc.).
Mar 25, 2009 at 03:38
Anything using GTK2 crawls on my computers, it's completly unusable. Be it GNOME, Xfce4 (3.x is always an option) or LXDE (I wouldn't go as far as calling this a DE, more like a WM with a panel). And let's not forget the GTK2 apps, requiring even more memory and cpu cycles.
A GTK2 desktop needs P4+ and 512M+ to be usable in my opinion.
GTK1 runs smooth on almost everything, but is ultimately a dead end, same with Qt3 (KDE3 runs fine on older computers, but requires a lot of memory, I wouldn't run it with less than 512M).
I usually just run Fluxbox and misc outdated GTK1(firefox2,gimp1,xmms,gmplayer etc)/console apps on my P2s/P3s, knowing I will never get a update that breaks my computers
(or fixes anything related to bugs or security. As always, nothing is perfect, or even close).
Mar 25, 2009 at 06:48
I've not tried Chakra but have used Arch which I must say is well designed and lean.
Chakra does have KDE 3 in their repositories (kdemod is actually a great KDE packaging), so it's not just KDE4.
Although, I'm not sure what the Live boots into and what you get.
Mentioned it cause you wrote about not having a Arch with X on one Cd.
Mar 25, 2009 at 09:49
And you're back to the same list of issues you mentioned when you left Linux.
They're not gonna solve them, not in our lifetimes.
Mar 25, 2009 at 09:57
@Ole:
I agree that GTK+2 is much slower than GTK+1.2, but:
(i) GTK+1.2 is ugly for nowadays standards;
(ii) most applications require GTK+2;
(iii) Qt3 must be even more of a hog
I really can't run GIMP1! For practical reasons (shortcuts, features), I can't even run GIMP 2.0.5 (RHEL4 clones), but only 2.2.x or 2.4.x (or 2.6.x on Win32).
The problem is that I can use lightweight WMs that don't require GTK+2 (IceWM, *box, WindowMaker), with a file manager that uses the FOX Toolkit (Xfe), but… when comes to a browser, Firefox needs GTK+2, and Opera requires Qt!
And again, I need GTK+2 for GIMP too. Oh, even gxine is GTK+2 based.
Mar 25, 2009 at 16:52
Chakra Live boots into KDE4.
Kdemod is for installing KDE into Arch.
Mar 26, 2009 at 10:29
I ran a minimal debian xfce4 on a cel600 / 256mb notebook with good results. The 'distros' like mint xfce were dog slow. The key is a minimal base system install (netinstall) then apt the rest. Apps without heavy deps are a must. The real minimal WM's can save 20~30mb of ram but require more work so I won't go into them.
Example for a lightweight desktop: (I've ditched FF in favour of epiphany or opera)
aptitude install xfce4 alsa cups rcconf gcalctool gpicview gqview mtpaint xarchiver mplayer epiphany-browser abiword gnumeric epdfview leafpad brasero audacious
Mar 26, 2009 at 10:43
I suppose it should be: –without-recommends –without-suggests
Mar 26, 2009 at 14:17
Well yes if you wanted even less bloat; aptitude -R. Suggests is always disabled by default.
Mar 27, 2009 at 19:04
"I can't buy a Mac just for the sake of trying it. "
well,the next time i need/decide to buy a computer, i'll go back to sixth grade and start saving (my first pc was bought with blood and tears-computers were expensive back then) to buy myself a macbook (probably the cheapest considering the times we live in). it might be a cure to this madness, otherwise it's 100 beers less…
Mar 28, 2009 at 22:32
On attend toujours la sortie de Berangerux, une distribution tellement parfaite que même Beranger voudra l'utiliser !
Mar 29, 2009 at 23:39
You liked Mint XFCE so you should know that an LXDE version seems to be build (see the forum) So maybe…
Mar 29, 2009 at 23:45
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=151&t=22891
Apr 1, 2009 at 08:35
Well, what did you expect?
Linux hasn’t changed that much in the few months that you weren’t using it.
Now that you don’t need GNOME, at least for this old laptop of your, i don’t see the reason you aren’t just installing Slackware. That will make most of your distro rants disappear..
Apr 1, 2009 at 08:53
Slackware isn't "prepared" to hibernate. I can't just issue "echo -n disk > /dev/power/state", or can I?
Slackware's kernel is very slow to boot, and I am not willing to bake my own kernel.
With Slackware too I would have to mix several 3rd-party repositories to get what I want. Mixing is evil.
Should I need an application that has some GNOME dependencies, what do I do in Slackware? I'll never install Dropline or any of the other shitty projects.
So the answer is NO.
Apr 14, 2009 at 05:40
PCFluxboxOS?
Apr 14, 2009 at 09:42
Khai, I won't use unofficial spins, nor distros that release on an UNGUARANTEED schedule, distros whose security updates I can't trust to happen in a timely manner, distros whose full source packages aren't available, and so on.
Besides, I just noticed that I am NOT satisfied with "lightweight desktops". What I want is the functionality of GNOME 2.4…2.8 without the BLOAT of the current "technologies".
May 11, 2009 at 15:52
Give puppy linux a try.
If you have no problem to do experiment then give a try to tiny core linux. Both can be run from USB stick.. so no problem to do experiment.
May 11, 2009 at 15:55
When you'll show me the exact source packages corresponding to the exact binary packages available in Puppy…
…and when you'll find me that they issue security updates in a timely manner…
…then I *might* consider Puppy Linux more than a bad joke.
Binary-only distros === shit.