Tiny Laptop Harddrive, Fat Linux Distro

[kanbeki]

Just got a completely unmarked notebook with a 2gb hd :P any distros that would run decent on this rugged lil beast, most of em now a days tend to be bloated, heck even LFS is bloated..so yeah..anything that installs in under a gig would be greatly appricated..and no I'm not just buying a new hd for it..that would be a waste of money

[Loki3]

I recommend ZipSlack. It'll fit onto a 100Mb zip disk. Even if you don't have a zip drive you can always unzip it directly onto your hard drive. I ran zip slack on my 75Mhz, 12Mb, 500mg laptop. It wasn't fast but it worked.

[delete]

I have a 5.58gb and I run Yoper 2, had mandrake official 10, was running suse 9.0, but 2 gigs...wow.

GOOD LUCK!

[mrBen]

Damn Small Linux fits on 50Mb.

Peanut Linux is also small.

Slackware and Debian can be small - install a very small base set of software, and then (for Debian) apt-get from there.

I've run Slack and Debian on 500Mb.

[Icarus]

2gb and it's considered small?? What is this world comming to! My first laptop had a 700mb drive and I managed to get Debian installed with iceWM and still got work done!

Kids these days...soon they will think that 1.5ghz processors are too slow!!
what, they already do? *grumble* *grumble*

So, I would suggest a light install with Debian would be good or if you don't mind waiting...Gentoo would be good also

Of course you can always select 'Custom Install' on almost any modern distro and cut out everything you do not need/want until you have the space...

[cybertron]

Yeah, I even got Mandrake installed on a 2.5 (but used less than 2) GB partition. I had to cut out a lot of packages from the basic install, but nothing that I missed horribly. You're not going to be watching any DivX movies though:)

Icarus: I started a kernel compile last night before I went to bed and when I left for work this morning it was still going. My 1.6 Ghz processor must not be up to snuff:) Actually I think when I close the lid on my laptop it's doing some very weird power save thing that must pause all the programs or something. It's stops music when I do that too. But a kernel compile taking all night sounds like a good excuse to get a new computer;)

[ph34r]

A full install (install every package) of Slack 9.1 is just under 2gb. A very usable install would be about 1gb.

A base install of Debian is about 90mb, a useable install is about 700mb.

[Icarus]

Originally posted by cybertron
I started a kernel compile last night before I went to bed and when I left for work this morning it was still going. My 1.6 Ghz processor must not be up to snuff:) Actually I think when I close the lid on my laptop it's doing some very weird power save thing that must pause all the programs or something. On an Inspiron 2650...ya, some wierd power saving functions going on there, try disabling APM and use ACPI!!! :p

I've got an Inspiron 600m with a 1.3Ghz processor and it takes about, um...15 minutes to compile a kernel and modules...so I don't think the problem is your laptop, but YOU!!! :D
j/k you know...it does sound like you might be using APM which does some REALLY funky things on laptops
I use purely ACPI and the only thing that stops when I close the lid is the display, but I had to do a few tweaks to get that working! ;)

[cybertron]

Hmm. I hadn't considered that it might also be using APM. I know it's using ACPI for some things (battery mostly) because they didn't work with just APM. I did think it was odd that when I commented out the ACPI script for the lid closing it didn't change anything:confused: I think it might only happen with my 2.6.6 kernel too, so I may have accidentally left APM enabled. I'll have to recompile it without and hope it doesn't take 8+ hours this time:)

[Icarus]

Yes, make sure there is no APM enabled, that will severly mess with the ACPI stuff. And in the 2.6 kernel there is a Dell Laptop support option that will help with Dell's "special" power management hardware :)

Whoops, sorry kanbeki for hijacking the thread.
I hope we answered the question of what to install on a 2GB drive...

[cybertron]

Originally posted by Icarus
Whoops, sorry kanbeki for hijacking the thread.
I hope we answered the question of what to install on a 2GB drive...

Yeah, oops. I should keep my problems to myself (or at least my own thread:)).

[gehidore]

gentoo, if you have the time, can be any size you make it.
debian, can be any size you make it.
slackware is what i put on my laptop when i had a 500mb hd, i also use slack on my 2gb drive in my 266MHz laptop :)

[lerninlinux]

I am a complete newbie but in the past week I have installed Damnsmall and Mandrake 10 (not at the same time) onto a 1.3 gig drive with a 256 swap. I tried installing Knoppix from the live CD but it needed 2.2 gigs or more. Mandrake really did not have much room for anything else on the drive. The space Damnsmall took was, of course, damn small.

[StarTiger]

If your conservitive with what you put on, you can fit mandrake into a 1.8 gb partition and have a couple humdred mB left over. I had a laptop with a 4 gb drive a 2 gb partion for win98, 1.8 for / 245Mb swap, and 25 /boot. it's not a lot, but it worked.

p.s. i just upgraded that 4 gb drive and i'd be willing to sell it cheep.

[rbrimhall]

Originally posted by Icarus
On an Inspiron 2650...ya, some wierd power saving functions going on there, try disabling APM and use ACPI!!! :p

I've got an Inspiron 600m with a 1.3Ghz processor and it takes about, um...15 minutes to compile a kernel and modules...so I don't think the problem is your laptop, but YOU!!! :D
j/k you know...it does sound like you might be using APM which does some REALLY funky things on laptops
I use purely ACPI and the only thing that stops when I close the lid is the display, but I had to do a few tweaks to get that working! ;)

Mind sharing your display blacking acpid event? I have one set up but it refuses to do anything...

xset dpms -force standby will kill the screen from the cli but not within the script...

sorry for further hijacking the thread but it has already ventured from topic, right?

[Pafnoutios]

I just recently happened into the possession of a pentium 100MHz laptop with 16MB RAM and about 800MB harddrive. I plan on installing Deli Linux (http://delilinux.berlios.de/) on it as soon as the replacement battery and PCMCIA network card I ordered arrive.

[sharth]

Right now, I'm at 3.4 gigs with debian.

/home is 1.7 gigs though.
/usr/src (kernel source) is 268mb too.

so.. that brings it to around 1.5 gigs. xfce4 installed, but theres room for gnome (200 mb) or kde (314 mb, since part of gnome is already installed)