Slack 9 installation

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Dapper Dan
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Slack 9 installation

Post by Dapper Dan »

I'm putting Slack 9 on an old 1996 Pentium Pro with a 2 gig hard drive and 40 mg ram. Origonally, it had a Windows 98 partition on hda 1, but I had to eliminate it because the Slack installation is running more than 1 gig. Question: Can you run X without a windows manager? In other words, can you boot to console, type in your program and it will run in X without a windows manager like blackbox, IceWM, Gnome, etc??
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Post by Sky »

sure u can.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

So if I'm in console and X is running, I can type in the command for WordPerfect and it will run in GUI without ever having to use Gnome. IceWM, etc? Can you run multiple programs in GUI this way? I know when your in "Failsafe " you can only run one program at a time...
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Post by Sky »

Dunno wether u can run multiple programs - never tried it...
But with one program it should be simple..

just put

exec program

in your ~/.xinitrc and execute startx.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Thanks, Sky. One other thing. What advantages, if any, are there in using rieserfs over regular ext 3? I went with rieser on a former recommendation of yours.. :)

By the way, have you ever tried Filerunner? Great file manager and very simple. I'm liking it more everytime I use it. I think the new Gentoo file manager is based on File Runner..
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Post by Sky »

I prefer reiserfs b/c i don't like the damn checking ext2/3 perform after beeing mounted 20 or thirty times... On a large HDD this takes very long time...
The same if ur pc somehow crashed. Ext2/3 check and check and check.... zzzZZZZzzzzZZZzz...
Reiserfs is much faster in reconstructiong ur FS.
Besides that there might be some other advantages/disadvantages - but i chose Reiser because of these points :)

And i have never used a Filemanager with Linux...
cp, mv and rm do a good job ;)
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Post by Troodon »

In other words, can you boot to console, type in your program and it will run in X without a windows manager like blackbox, IceWM, Gnome, etc??
Sky is right, you can, but there's not much you can do w/o a window manager because window borders and handles will be missing, so you won't be able to move around, close, and resize windows. A very small window manager is twm, you may wish to give it a try (you don't need a Desktop such as Gnome or KDE). Also, you must run startx from the console to start X Window. Filesystem checks after system crashes are a feature, rather than a bug, and the number of mounts before an automatic check is performed can be set.

I have an old P166 w/ 48MB RAM, 2GB HD, 2MB VC, running on Linux RH 7.3, Gnome 2.2/Ximian Desktop 2/Metacity WM with a minimalistic theme. I set it up to start in console mode (level 3 in /etc/inittab). I enter startx at the prompt to avoid automatic execution of xdm and I configured the session not to launch nautilus (is available in the menu though, under Accessories|File Manager). When I run Netscape 4.8, AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Sylpheed in parallel swap file can hit 40 MB but overall system performance is not too bad, considering. Couldn't possible run OpenOffice, of course. :)
Last edited by Troodon on Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Sky wrote:I prefer reiserfs b/c i don't like the damn checking ext2/3 perform after beeing mounted 20 or thirty times... On a large HDD this takes very long time...
The same if ur pc somehow crashed. Ext2/3 check and check and check.... zzzZZZZzzzzZZZzz...
I made the mistake of partioning once with ext2. It DID take forever to check if you had an improper shutdown. Ext3 on the other hand would easily find where it left off after improper shutdown and did not check. I am noticing that RierserFS boots up and down much faster! I like it! :D

Sky wrote:And i have never used a Filemanager with Linux...
cp, mv and rm do a good job ;)
Sky, do you use a GUI for anything? :wink: I'm getting much better at the command line, but my wife has to have the GUI on the home box.

I ran into trouble installing Slack on my two gig box. I tried to install twice and kept getting errors that there was no more room on the hard drive. second and third times I tried a very minimal install and ran into same problem???

I just went with a very minimal Mandrake install, (No nautilus, KDE, Gnome, Office programs, etc.) and it went right together. I'll try Slack on my 6 gig box, now that this one is up and running. :D
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Post by Sky »

Sure i use GUI'S... but nor for a file manager. Because clicking around takes more time then tiping... Especially b/c of that neat <tab> auto completion :)

And normaly 2gig will be enough. My main pc's system disc has 6.4gb (-1gb for /home)
My Backup system has 2gig max. for slack. (6gb in total - have to put a 60 or 80 gb disc in it :)) So 2 gig are enough. Though this box doesn't have X.

The problem might be that u are trying 9.0 ;)
With 8.1 it works perfect. Chose Expert installation and don't select the package u dont want...
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Sky wrote:Sure i use GUI'S... but nor for a file manager. Because clicking around takes more time then tiping... Especially b/c of that neat <tab> auto completion :)
Yeah, that tab key is just too cool.. :)
Sky wrote:The problem might be that u are trying 9.0 ;)
With 8.1 it works perfect. Chose Expert installation and don't select the package u dont want...
First time through, I did full. Second time, I eliminated many. The third time, even more and got the same error's everytime!?? Slack 9 says, full is almost 2 gig, so I should have had plenty. Can't figure this out. Minimal Mandrake went together without any complaints..
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