I just have lost 3h on cleaning suse 11.1 of rubbish…I have upgraded my hardware and my old system did not see any of new hardware…so lets start…I use suse as a platform for vmware…suse 11.0 was totally misplaced and in the end I did have to go to 11.1 which is looking much better…but…I install minimal server configuration…and what do I get? lots of surplus soft…almost 2Gigs of soft which I do not need…for what do I need on my server in text mode a pdf? or sound? or vorbis or jpeg or png or other things like calculators or web browsers? is there any explanation for hundreds of megs of data on my very simple setup? kernel, gcc, some x11 files for vmware. Do I have to go through this cleaning process? if I try to install the system manually which is cut off this surplus data the installation gets RED of anger…guys it is a time to take a break, stop building more and more nice guis…go back to console and make it tide, take an example of QNX…SuSE gets too big and too dusty, are you following steps of Papa Bill? do you pretend to make new VISTA? I use suse since I do not remember and I tell you this is d last of my installations…next is Ubuntu…sorry to say it but you have lost the Linux principle…instead of small, tide and friendly system you create BIG, buggy bag of software which is unhappy of itself…
Software being noted as growing more and more bloated is a perenial observation, and its been a complaint as long as I can remember there being software. For example, around 6 years ago, there was this IBM article …
Lightweight Linux, Part 1
The more popular distributions tend to be bloated. This is true for Ubuntu and Fedora, in addition to openSUSE.
If it is a light weight distribution you are looking for, then IMHO Ubuntu may not meet your requirements either (although I have friends who use Ubuntu who are quite happy - although they do NOT put Ubuntu on PCs that require light weight distributions). You could look at other light weight Linux distributions, such as
- Arch
- D**n Small Linux
- Puppy
- TinyMe
- Zenwalk
There is a good wiki here:
List of Linux distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No, there is no such principle that Linux distros have to be small. If there is any principle, it’s that Linux is libre software and you can mould it anyway you want. If you want to work with a smaller installation then there are lots of other distros you can consider. Feel free to choose them over OpenSUSE if that’s what you want but don’t expect us to follow you. Some have been already mentioned by oldcpu. Then of course there are the do-it-yourself distros like Debian and Slackware. A while back I needed a tiny install to run dosemu to run some DOS hardware control software (an EPROM burner). Debian did it for me in about 16MB, on a 32MB machine.
And just for interest’s sake, Kubuntu is beaten by OpenSUSE’s KDE for low footprint. I have a Kubuntu 8.10 computer that I use at work which swaps a bit with 512MB. However OpenSUSE KDE runs, not very comfortably, but adequately on a 256MB machine. I wouldn’t use it in the long term though. But nobody does KDE better than SUSE.
I would use those tiny distros in some situations but I don’t want to give up my comfy OpenSUSE setup. I like it with 1GB of more. RAM is cheap now. Have fun going your own way.
If you’re looking for minimalistic; you definately chose the wrong distro! I originally tried suse in 98, and even back then it was a multi-cdrom monstrosity that included everything plus the kitchen sink. That was its’ selling point, to me (no need to d/l everything over a crappy modem -it was either on one of the 6 cds or it wasn’t worth having).
You probably want something closer to gentoo or arch. In fact, I would be surprised if gentoo didn’t have an ebuild that you could use to make a vmware based server out of.
cashoob wrote:
> I just have lost 3h on cleaning suse 11.1 of rubbish…I have upgraded
You mean openSUSE 11.1 of course, a desktop/laptop oriented distribution.
Just in case anyone confuses this with SLES 11.
> my hardware and my old system did not see any of new hardware…so lets
> start…I use suse as a platform for vmware…suse 11.0 was totally
> misplaced and in the end I did have to go to 11.1 which is looking much
> better…but…I install minimal server configuration…and what do I
> get? lots of surplus soft…almost 2Gigs of soft which I do not
Again, openSUSE is not targeted as a minimal server only distribution.
You can, of course, trim things down by doing a manual package install,
but to my knowledge there is no minimal server config for openSUSE.
> need…for what do I need on my server in text mode a pdf? or sound? or
> vorbis or jpeg or png or other things like calculators or web browsers?
It’s likely that you need either a server centric or small lightweight
distribution for your needs. Again, you CAN trim openSUSE down fairly
easy, but it’s not the default. It’s not hard, but since that’s not
how it is designed, you have to put a small bit of effort into it.
> is there any explanation for hundreds of megs of data on my very simple
> setup? kernel, gcc, some x11 files for vmware. Do I have to go through
> this cleaning process? if I try to install the system manually which is
> cut off this surplus data the installation gets RED of anger…guys it
> is a time to take a break, stop building more and more nice guis…go
> back to console and make it tide, take an example of QNX…SuSE gets too
> big and too dusty, are you following steps of Papa Bill? do you pretend
> to make new VISTA? I use suse since I do not remember and I tell you
Actually, openSUSE does more or less target “Papa Bill’s” OS line.
> this is d last of my installations…next is Ubuntu…sorry to say it
> but you have lost the Linux principle…instead of small, tide and
> friendly system you create BIG, buggy bag of software which is unhappy
> of itself…
Ubuntu, the working one, is also fairly bloated as well… and if you
use Synaptic, it installs, configures and STARTS the package (in the
case of daemons and services)… which I find sort of distasteful.
But if Ubuntu fits your needs better, then use it.
Alternatively, when SLES 11 is released you can give it a try.
I’ll admit, Novell (and openSUSE to an extent) have been trying
to get rid of the small and simple server. And I find their
arbitrary delineation of the line between “server” and “desktop”
to be just plain wrong especially since *ix was never meant
to be thought of in those terms.
With that said, Novell claims they “know” what people want when
folks say “server” and what folks want when they say “desktop”.
Personally, I don’t think they have a clue though… but Red
Hat is making enough missteps (although they are making more
forward steps vs. Novell right now) to still keep Novell
ahead of the ball game… at least for now (gap is closing
rapidly).
It’s not terribly hard to make openSUSE do what you want though.
But no, the traditional server market is NOT what openSUSE
is after… so it’s not a default configuration for it.