Re: [PLUG] Minimal Ubuntu desktop build

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

Thanks Eric!  I tested some of this out in a VM, details in-line.

On 10/20/2014 11:28 PM, Eric H. Johnson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> JP asked at dinner about doing a minimal install of Ubuntu desktop. This is

The goal is a MythTV Front-end on an old Mini9 (hi Amul :) with a 4G
SSD.  It currently has 12.04 on it, and the disk is about 85% full, so I
can't imagine an in-place upgrade will end well.  I'll probably try it
anyway just to see what happens.

But if I install install a slim enough system, the next in-place upgrade
might work.  And if you've ever tried to remove packages once installed
by default...it gets very ugly, very fast.  Starting minimal and staying
there is a much better option.


> what I did for a minimal system. I wrote up $B!H(Bbrain dead$B!I(B instructions, so
> it has much more detail than most of the people here would need. This was
> done with Ubuntu 12.04. Some things have changed since then, so YMMV.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----$B"*(B
> Download Ubuntu 12.04 Server
> 
> Install minimal Ubuntu 12.04 server
> 
> Select language
> Select F4 and select "Install a minimal system"
[...]

Tested in VMware Workstation, and right off the bat I used the VMware
auto-install feature so it bypassed a bunch of this stuff, including the
F4 minimal thing.  So I just tried again on another VM.

For my first install I started with 1.3G used and ended up with 2.9G used.

For my second, the F4 "minimal" method still gave me 1.1G ('df -hl')
used!  So almost no difference to my non-minimal install, at first, but
see bottom.


> Install packages as follows:
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get install -y xorg
> sudo apt-get install -y gnome-core --no-install-recommends
> sudo apt-get install -y gdm ubuntu-artwork compiz-gnome firefox
> sudo reboot

After some trial and error, the round-one summary was:

sudo apt-get install mythtv unity ubuntu-session

Where:
mythtv = 450 newly installed, 196 MB of archives, 885MB will be used
unity = 448 newly installed, 109 MB of archives, 421MB will be used
ubuntu-session = 2 newly installed, 44 MB of archives, 574MB will be used

That boots into a GUI and runs the MythTV Front-end, though I had some
problems with ugly dialog boxes (we're talking TK/TCL & Win2000 ugly
here!) and missing things, fixed by Eric's:
sudo apt-get install -y gnome-core ubuntu-artwork compiz-gnome
--without-recommends
= 164 newly installed, 106 MB of archives, 300MB will be used

The round-two is interesting.  After installing stuff it's 2.5G used as
opposed to 2.9 for the round-one, BUT it is not booting into the GUI at
all and I'm out of time for this for now.  Half a gig is trivial and
usually not worth the extra effort, but in this use-case it *might* mean
the difference between future in-place upgrades and not.  Interesting...

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|      http://bashcookbook.com/
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