Stripping down installed VL 6.0 Light

[homebrew]

After several false starts, alternately trying the live and bootable install versions, I have VL 6.0 Light up & running on an ancient Thinkpad 385XD (233MHz Pentium, 96mb RAM, 3Gb HD). Because of the limited disk space, on the first few tries I left out several optional items, but kept having problems getting GUI mode to work, so I finally installed everything. It's now all working, including a wireless connection to my internet router, and I'm more than satisfied with features and speed, but I'm left with almost no free disk space.

This is not my primary (or even secondary) computer, and I'm just looking for some basic office functionality. Despite its name, Pathetic Writer looks OK, but I'm not sure about the SIAG spreadsheet, and doc/xls or Oo compatibility would be a big plus. I also want to keep a usable browser and media player, and the ability to communicate wirelessly with my Windows network. I know I don't need the "dev" package, and I don't have any strong preference regarding a desktop other than wanting a workable GUI.

I'd appreciate some help in safely removing the dev stuff, as well as other suggestions for recovering some disk space (and maybe even boosting performance) without losing functionality.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[M0E-lnx]

It'd be nice if you told us which WM you use now and how you log in to your desktop.

I've found that I can save some RAM if I completely bypass the GUI login greeter and use the terminal prompt to log in and run my X session from there.  You can even do automatic login this way, or automatically start your preferred window manager as soon as you log in. 

Definitely removing the dev stuff would save you some disk space, but dont hold your breath, it may not be as much as you think.  For a list of all the "DEV" stuff, mount your installation disk or the installation ISO image and you'll find a file named "DEV" in inside a folder named 'veclinux'.  You may choose to remove *some* of those packages from your system using 'removepkg <name_of_package>'.  I would not remove the kernel headers because some firmware on your box may need it, so I'd pick very carefully through there.

If you're like me and dont read the included documentation, you can remove it and save a little more disk space.
Again, you may choose to remove *some* of it or all of it.  I have 7.0 installation where /usr/doc has 424MB of data.  That's nothing but documentation and should not hurt to remove at all.

But like I said, post us your current environment specs.  These are a few things you should include:
* Current window manager (icewm, openbox, lxde, etc)
* Current login manager (GDM, XDM, KDM, etc)
* Active daemons (wicd, hal, gdm, etc)

[nightflier]

These are the packages in the "dev" group:

Code:

autoconf
automake
bc
bison
ccache
doxygen
gcc
gcc-g++
gccmakedep
guile
kernel-headers-2.6.24.5_smp
imake
libtool
m4
make
makedepend
nasm
pkg-config
pmake
requiredbuilder
strace
subversion

As M0E mentions, you probably want to leave the kernel-headers in there.
Also, if you use XDM, it doesn't work right without gcc.
The kernel sources represent a big chunk of space. Pkgname is "kernel-src-2.6.27.12"

To safely remove packages, use the "removepkg" command (as root):

Code:

removepkg autoconf

[homebrew]

Thanks for the reply, M0E-lnx and nightflier.

I'm using icewm and XDM currently. I checked 'top' 'ps -A' and 'ps aux' for wicd, hal, and gdm but came up empty, and I'm not sure what else is relevant to your request for "active daemons."

Removing the kernel source material (and maybe the documentation) sounds like a safe way to give myself a little breathing room.

I have some other things on my plate right now, and this project is certainly not at the top of my list, so it may be a few days before I get back to it. Thanks again for your help.

[M0E-lnx]

You may consider dropping the GUI login manager altogether and going straight to terminal login with an automatically started x session if you wish.  Not sure that's going to make a huge difference, although if you find that works, should be able to remove any login manager packages present on the system too.  You may use this guide to set that up https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Start_X_at_Boot It's for arch linux, but the instructions should work on VL too, just make sure you reference the correct paths.

I use this setup personally

Code:

~/.bash_profileif [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then
  exec startx
  # Could use xinit instead of startx
  #exec xinit -- /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp vt7
fi

  That will boot you to the normal text login, you enter your name and password, and if you are working on the default terminal, it will fire up your x session.  If you need to work on text mode only, you can press CTRL+ALT+F2 to get to tty2 and you will remain in text mode.

Your ~/.xinitrc may need a little tweaking to get your current window manager setup, but it should just be a matter of finding the line that starts the default desktop and replacing it with "exec ck-launch-session dbus-session icewm-session"