stozi
July 19th, 2009, 07:27 PM
If you use xubuntu you probably have limited hardware resources and/or a desire for speed. Personally, I have a 1Ghz CPU and a 4Gig hard drive. The default install of Xubuntu works well, but leaves room for improvement in resource use. I'm no guru, but I thought I'd share what I've done to reduce my OS heft with anyone who might not know these options.
Xubuntu gives you some programs that are default in Ubuntu but have lighter, faster and I'd say just as usable alternatives. I traded:
Totem for Xfmedia
Ristretto for Gpicview
Evince for Epdfviewer
gnome system monitor for Xfce taskmanager
I suppose if you have very limited image altering needs you could go for gpaint instead of gnome.
I installed Midori which is smaller and faster than firefox but too beta to do any javascript or ajax without crashing.
Other than that, I go through synaptic and remove all the programs which're obviously for something I never do, like deal with optical drives, screensavers, or gnumeric. I leave the ones that xubuntu-desktop relys on just for less headache at update time. Then I use deborphan, sudo apt-get autoclean & sudo apt-get autoremove to ensure nothing's left over.
If you go to Synaptic, select "installed" then order the packages by clicking on "size." you may notice that right up top, just smaller than linux-headers-2.6 are some help packs for openoffice, which is not installed in xubuntu by default. They are the dependancies of a meta-package, language-support-translations-en, which provides a few huge, I'd say useless help packages:
openoffice.org-help-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
thunderbird-locale-en-gb
gimp-help-en
evolution-documentation-en
My OS is on it's own drive with no personal files. It takes up under 2Gb, though everything I removed are somewhat counterbalanced by non-default packages that I need, like Openoffice Impress (please, please, someone make a gnome office ppt ap!), soundconverter, scim with chinese language support (ouch), and stardict.
So there you go. This is the bulk of my linux wisdom.
Xubuntu gives you some programs that are default in Ubuntu but have lighter, faster and I'd say just as usable alternatives. I traded:
Totem for Xfmedia
Ristretto for Gpicview
Evince for Epdfviewer
gnome system monitor for Xfce taskmanager
I suppose if you have very limited image altering needs you could go for gpaint instead of gnome.
I installed Midori which is smaller and faster than firefox but too beta to do any javascript or ajax without crashing.
Other than that, I go through synaptic and remove all the programs which're obviously for something I never do, like deal with optical drives, screensavers, or gnumeric. I leave the ones that xubuntu-desktop relys on just for less headache at update time. Then I use deborphan, sudo apt-get autoclean & sudo apt-get autoremove to ensure nothing's left over.
If you go to Synaptic, select "installed" then order the packages by clicking on "size." you may notice that right up top, just smaller than linux-headers-2.6 are some help packs for openoffice, which is not installed in xubuntu by default. They are the dependancies of a meta-package, language-support-translations-en, which provides a few huge, I'd say useless help packages:
openoffice.org-help-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
thunderbird-locale-en-gb
gimp-help-en
evolution-documentation-en
My OS is on it's own drive with no personal files. It takes up under 2Gb, though everything I removed are somewhat counterbalanced by non-default packages that I need, like Openoffice Impress (please, please, someone make a gnome office ppt ap!), soundconverter, scim with chinese language support (ouch), and stardict.
So there you go. This is the bulk of my linux wisdom.