Linux newbie here, sorry if this question has already been asked, but I was unable to find any information.
Does anyone know whether it is possible to get OpenSuse installed on a 2GB drive? Installing Windows XP has a footprint of 1.7GB, so would like to try OpenSuse as I have heard it has a much smaller footprint.
Any advice help, would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Mak.
Sure. Linux can have a small disk footprint. But you may not enjoy it very much. You may have to give up lots of nice programs. For sure something big like OpenOffice will be out of the question. You’ll just have to try it and see how much you have to give up. And there won’t be much room for your own files afterwards.
Why is your disk so small? Can you not get a larger disk?
Sure, but you certainly also want to use some extra applications and not only what comes the “bare” OS.
Also comparing XP (which is about 9 years old) with a recent linux distribution does not really make sense.
I agree with ken_yap, it won’t be much fun and hard disks are cheap, so why not buy something a little bigger?
I agree that you should look to buy a bigger drive. With 2GB, you will not be able to use the OS to store any files worth enjoying like games and multimedia. If you want to use it as a development machine, you are also limited as a decent IDE can take a fair amount of space. 2GB may be enough to host a website via apache, or do just basic Internet browsing.
I would recommend experiencing openSUSE with the features it could provide on a larger drive.
Thanks for all your input, I appreciate.
Basically the reason the drive is so small is that is a Solid State Disk, and cannot be upgraded. Also, the machine will be used only for browsing the Internet, like a kiosk pc.
I was hoping that OpenSuse would be ideal in this case, without having OpenOffice, or games installed.
Thanks again for your help.
-Mak
It is !!! You have to be very careful during install. One of my customers uses a very basic install, with a minimal XFCE and just Firefox for browsing. From what I remember it’s just about 1.2 GB
Hi Knurpht,
Thanks for your comments, if I could get the install to 1.2GB maximum this would be really great.
I did try install OpenSuSE 11.1 on the machine but of course it complains about lack of disk space, even after trying to remove packages such as multimedia, games, etc. It still complains that 2GB, will investigate further.
You can squeeze it well below 1GB but this will require hand picking the required packages and using some lightweight WM like IceWM or similar.
Have a read here.
Some eeepcs have 2 gig drives, so they’ll have valuable experience. I suspect they may even allow you to post a request for advice in ‘off-topic’ (assuming it isn’t actually an eee), as long as you’re polite and upfront about what you’re asking.
Good luck.
Thanks to everyone for their input. I will try out the links and recommendations.
Thanks.