xubuntu, unetbootin, and 4gb USB

[phillyj]

Slow as molasses. I went and burned Xubuntu Alt to a CD and installed the OS onto the USB drive. It took a few hours to install onto the USB. Everything worked well but it is very slow.

At least I have an understanding of the install process and how long it takes. I will install Lubuntu next. How does Lubuntu compare with the other lite *nix versions?

[sudodus]

Lubuntu is the lightest and fastest of the Ubuntu flavours. There are other linux distros, that are lighter or that fit better for old hardware.

But you must remember that the USB 2 drive is slow for read/write operations. Once the code is in the RAM, it will be much faster. But if the RAM is too small, and the system starts swapping, it will be slow again: slow if the swap partition is on an internal hard disk drive, very slow if the swap partition is on a USB disk or USB flash pendrive. USB 3 drives are faster, but if connected via a USB 2 port, it will be much slower than an internal hard disk drive.

The important thing is if the number-crunching will be fast (done within the RAM) or not. Don't worry so much if the manual commands will be slow. You can check if swap is used or not. From another command window, use either

  top

or

 swapon -s

while the numbercrunching is running.

[phillyj]

Well, I got a chance to try to install Lubuntu on my 4gb drive (actually <4gb). Anyway, it didn't work because I need a bigger drive. If xubuntu needs at least 3.7gb drive, then LiteUbuntu should have smaller drive requirements. Oh well, I'll try mint...ohwaitaminute...it needs 4gb too. Hmm, I think I will try DSL next then. What are they stuffing into distro nowadays?

[sudodus]

A regular install of Lubuntu 13.04 via the desktop iso needs 4.3 GB, but the final installed system is only around 2 GB (there are a lot of temporary files). I think it should work to install Lubuntu with the alternate iso into a drive with almost 4 GB. And I think that Lubuntu 12.04 is around the same size, so it should work too from its alternate iso.

If that does not work, you can make a persistent live system of any of the Ubuntu family flavours (the casper rw file can be around 3 GB which should be more than enough). So if you want Xubuntu, it should work in a persistent live system.

Another alternative is to run Ubuntu Server, if you need no graphical desktop environment, and this is a good alternative for a headless machine.

Finally you can start with the Ubuntu mini iso and add whatever packages you need.

DSL is nice and very small, but I think it is more like a toy to run on very old hardware. If you can find the necessary packages (or source code and compilers and compile your cryptocurrency mining rig yourself, that would be great

There are also other very small distros, for example Puppy Linux.

Another distro, that might be a good alternative is a "poor man's install' of Knoppix. This corresponds to a persistent live Ubuntu family system, but Knoppix is designed to run like this as its standard or preferred way to run.