Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Andy Wilkinson <drukargin@gmail.com>]

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On 06/30/10 06:48, Shoka wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.
>
> du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
> system:
>
> /usr/lib        418 MB
> /usr/portage   1200 MB
> /usr/share      550 MB
> /usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)
>
> The other directories are very small.
>
> I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
> like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.
>
> Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
> already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.
>
> I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
> is not a good idea. Is that true?
>
> May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
> stable)?
>
> I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> André
>
>
>   
If you're looking to save size in /usr/portage, you might consider
squashing it ( http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Squashed_Portage_Tree). 
Portage is a few hundred thousand files IIRC and most filesystems don't
cope with that very well.  My portage sqfs is one file about 47 MB. 
This has the side effect of making portage lookups a lot faster, as
well, since it's all kept in RAM.  It's a bit of work, and adds
complexity to kernel upgrades, but it's been worthwhile for me.

Also, Gnome is not a particularly minimal or light desktop
environment.    In fact, quite the opposite.  You could probably save a
lot of space by switching to xfce or lxde or something like that, if you
don't need all of the fluff in Gnome.  There's also a gnome-light meta
that cuts out some of the extras, if you want to keep the Gnome
look-and-feel.  I'm using xfce after a long time with Gnome and didn't
find the transition difficult at all.  I did wind up compiling a few of
my gnome-specific tools (banshee, gthumb in particular) which brought in
some gnome libraries, but the gnome meta still offers to pull in about a
hundred new packages.

-Andy

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