Mandrake Linux Minimal Install

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 10:57AM

Hi. Im iherriting my dads old Power Mac 8500/120. (He's still alive BTW. He got a new TiBook and im just using his older machine...)

I'm planning to install a copy of PPC Linux on there. I have Mandrake Linux 8.0. Does vers 8 have a minimal installation that includes graphical environments such as GNOME and KDE etc? I need to know this because tentatively today is when im gonna start the installation and usage of the Linux OS for the first time.

THanx in advance.

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 12:32PM

c'mon ppl....

brianmacos · September 3, 2002 3:31PM

[quote]Originally posted by Proud iBook Owner 2k2:

<strong>c'mon ppl....</strong><hr></blockquote>

You need to have a little patience when you post stuff!!!! <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />

stimuli · September 3, 2002 5:08PM

PiO2: Why go minimal? Minimal usually means (in the context of Linux installs) no gui, just Command Line (which you don't want to be your first linux experience).

My personal fave distro is YDL as it is their sole product and has little touches that make linux fit your mac like a glove. However, if you already have Mandrake, go w/ that.

I strongly suggest going with either 'default' install or 'developer workstation' (or whatever the heck it's called) if you wish to compile software from source.

In case you are wondering wtf 'blah-devel.ppc.rpm' and similar are for, those are header files needed to compile software. So if you wanna compile software, you will likely need many of those (Xfree-4.2.x-devel, glibc-devel, etc etc.)

So no, don't go w/ 'minimal' install. If you install way too many things, you can always uninstall afterwards.

Also, I'll warn you now: you'll prob'ly reinstall linux 12 times in the next 1.5 years, I know I did (although I learned a tremendous amount in doing so).

Best of luck!

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 6:19PM

stimuli thanks for all the advice but i *NEED* to go minimal. I only have 1.0 GB to work with. Ive heard from another Mandrake user that there IS a minimal graphical install. Does YDL have a minimal install? Oh and I may triple boot my computer here with OS9/X and Makdrake Linux 8. Im not gonna put YDL on here because it needs to have a swap partition and i dont wanna do that. I hear that people are pretty satisfied with Mandrake 8.0. I could download 8.2 but im going to go with 8.0 for now. Another thing is troubling me. I found a tutorial on how to CORRECTLY install Mandrake along side Mac OSes and he never mentions a boot strap partition or a swap partition. Should I assume that they are both with in the Master Linux partition? Thats the only thing that really confused me about that tutorial. Are those parts. absolutely needed for Linux to function properly?

Those are all the questions and concerns i have for now.

Thanx again in advance.

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 6:23PM

Oh and yes i also have YDL so i have a choice of two diff distros. Mandrake for here andYDL/Mandrake for the 8500.

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 6:28PM

Oh and yes i also have YDL so i have a choice of two diff distros. Mandrake for here andYDL/Mandrake for the 8500.

stimuli · September 3, 2002 7:09PM

Hmmmm.... 1GB... if you have less than 128 MB RAM you should set aside 128MB of your 1GB partition for swap. The installer will walk you through this (I should think). Basically you 'wipe' the 1GB part. and recreate 872 MB ('ext2') and 128MB ('swap') partitions in it's place.

You don't have to have a swap, and if you forgo any GUI you may not need one. But if you have less than 512MB you ought to have swap.

X + Gnome/KDE + Mozilla = a lot of ram used. Plus, like any UNIX-like system, it likes to cache reads into RAM for next time.

I recommend: 'minimal' YDL distro, then reboot, mount the install cd, and manually install XFree86 and related packages. (rpm -Uvh /mnt/cdrom/Yellowdog/RPMS/XFree86-* and any dependancies (it will tell you the dependancies it needs if it can't install XFree86-*))

Then, also install a CLI editor like nano (on tasty morsels) or emacs or vi, a CLI web browser like w3m (ditto), and maybe fluxbox.

Use nano if you need to edit any config files (like make the last line of ~/.xinitrc "exec fluxbox" like in <a href="http://www.stimuli.ca/linux/files/.xinitrc"; target="_blank">my .xinitrc</a>

Once you get the command 'startx' working, and have a gui, type into an xterm:

w3m go-gnome.com | sh

and you will have a nice gui for installing Ximian gnome (and any dependancies!) on YDL.

You need YDL 2.2 or lower (2.1, 2) to do this as 2.3 is too current and is not yet supported by Ximian.

From there, install the bare minimum Gnome packages, and you are done!

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 8:07PM

simian do you have similar installation instructions for Mandrake?

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 3, 2002 8:49PM

stimuli do you have similar installation instructions for Mandrake?

stimuli · September 3, 2002 11:47PM

No, I used Mand. 8.0 once on a whim on my trusty PBG3 292mhz, and thought it was half baked. No option to turn off trackpad 'tap' (grrr...), no pmud installed (power manager unit daemon, allows sleep/wakeup/battery saving).

Apparently Mandrake is the 'easiest' distro to use but I cannot qualify that w/ personal experience. I got too pissed off at little details I had come to expect from YDL that were missing, and Man 8.0 'felt' like a straight PC port.

I strongly recommend YDL 2.2 as Mandrake/PPC is not supported by <a href="http://www.ximian.com/download/"; target="_blank">Ximian Gnome</a>, whereas YDL is. The reason that is a big deal is because Ximian wrote an awesome piece of software called red-carpet which makes installation and upgrading of packages super easy, and figures out all the rpm 'dependancies' for you and downloads them. This allows you to avoid 'dependancy hell' which if you do not know what that is, use any RPM-based distro (redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, YDL, etc) and you will soon find out.

Red-carpet will make installing any YDL/Ximian packages easy. So basically you could just choose 'gnome-applets' or similar, and it will download and install gnome-core, gnome-menus, etc, etc, and all of their deps as well.

Doing that by hand, from console mode (Command Line Interface) from a mounted CD is sheer madness. I'd maybe try it but I would never recommend it to a newbie.

However, you could install a minimal Mandrake install, then reboot, mount the Install cd, find the rpm directory, try installing KDE or Gnome, read the errors re: deps, try installing gnome-* AND those deps, read those new errors, etc etc.

But I don't recommend it. If you had 2+ GB (ideally four, like me) for linux you could install as many or as few packages as you like. But you have to ration out those MBs with a mere 800+ MB to work with.

edit: BTW, if you DO go w/ YDL 2.2 + ximian gnome, when it gives you an option to use a mirror, ALWAYS use a mirror. D/ling from ximian will give you like 2KB/sec, whereas using Duke University mirror will give you 200-500KB/sec through cable.

[ 09-04-2002: Message edited by: stimuli ]</p>

madmax559 · September 4, 2002 1:07AM

<a href="http://www.gentoo.org"; target="_blank">www.gentoo.org</a>

if you can find a distro that can beat that...

ill....ill ...eat this post

stimuli · September 4, 2002 4:39AM

Truly, that distro looks k-rad, but for a newbie, and having never used it myself, I can't recommend it. It's more 1337 than debian. Prob'ly the fastest linux distro possible.

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 4, 2002 11:07AM

Is it possible to do a minimal install of YDL with an environment such as KDE or GNOME? I heard that the swap size should be at least twice the amount of memory installed. I think either way if I go with Mandrake or YDL that I should be fine. One question though: does YDL still support SCSI? Ive asked around and ppl have said that Drake does.

Thanks,

PiBO2k2

[ 09-04-2002: Message edited by: Proud iBook Owner 2k2 ]</p>

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 4, 2002 12:57PM

does it?

stimuli · September 5, 2002 2:45AM

Yes, SCSI support is built into the linux kernel itself. So all linux distros have scsi.

[quote]Is it possible to do a minimal install of YDL with an environment such as KDE or GNOME?<hr></blockquote>

No. You have to do minimal, then install KDE or Gnome. Minimal means bare-bones, which means no GUI.

Which is fine, but for a first time linux user, well... have fun.

If you insist on doing it that way, I can try to help you as I ahve done exactly that before. But it's kinda frustrating. I still recommend YDL.(It's also way more current than Man 8.0 ppc)

[quote]I heard that the swap size should be at least twice the amount of memory installed. <hr></blockquote>This is a rough guide. If you have 1GB Ram, you don't need swap at all (as a desktop user). If you have 16MB RAM, I'd go w/ at least 128MB Swap.

I personally have 384MBram, and 160MB swap, and rarely need the swap at all. Linux's memory management in 2.4 kernels is not to be underestimated.

The only time I need swap is when I run Mac OS 9 inside of linux (Mac-On-Linux or MOL) with one or possibly two other X sessions, Galeon web browser open, xmms playing tunes and a couple (3+) term windows. If I did all that w/ out MOL, I wouldn't need swap.

How much RAM do you have?

madmax559 · September 5, 2002 10:00AM

print out the install guide on gentoo.org & follow

that....it will work perfectly

i just installed gentoo 1.2 on 2 x86 machines

with no problems whatsoever & with no excess

junk that comes with redhat or mandrake

base + kde302 & a few utils & thats it

& yeah its fast...20secs from poweron to desktop

& thats with oracle9i running on it...

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 5, 2002 11:25AM

I thought i mentioned it before but I have 384 megs of RAM here in my iBook. But where i wanna install Linux is on an older PM 8500 with 64 megs of ram.

ITs got a 1GB HD... im sure id need a swap partiton for that....

proud ibook owner 2k2 · September 5, 2002 11:29AM

MadMax, will Gentoo Linux install onto a 1GB HD with out any problems?

Mandrake Linux Minimal Install

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