Devuan ASCII Minimal Install

Made a minimal install of Devuan ASCII (32 bits) another one, on the Thinkpad T60, swapping the HDD, of course.
This time went for a truly minimal setup, choosing only "Standard System Utilities".

Nothing strange here... A plain vanilla encrypted LVM setup on a 320 GB HDD.

After the initial install, adding updadtes (a new kernel) and isntalling:

xorg openbox obconf menu

The whole enchilada uses some 1.4 GB of HDD.
Amazing the small amount of RAM that uses, granted, there isn't that much installed yet.

Frankuntu Ye Olde Sony Vaio PCG FRV37

A bit of a Frankenstein experiment with the really ancient Sony Vaio... Sort of a continuation of my stupid and time wasting experiments with slimmed down Linux installations on old boxes, just because it can be done.

Installed Ubuntu Server 16.04 from a Mini CD install, and then added a minimal GUI.
The base installation took about an hour choosing: Standard System utilities, OpenSSH server and Basic Ubuntu Server.

As usual, the installer detected the PCIA WiFi card, but after the was over it left me with a system without Wifi and using 1.3 GB of HDD (from a 60 HDD one).

Setting up the WiFi card manually took a minute, and on onto the GUI install we go!
Issued a:

sudo apt-get install xorg

That downloads 44.6 MB of files, and then expands those onto 256 MB.

Executing a startx (and not X you old fart!!!) starts X Window with no window (the thing actually looks like a full screen xterm), the mouse pad works, but I can't type dink on that huge xterm.

Switched to a virtual console, and killed X. or, you know, startx :p

Installed a window manager, and the program to configure it:

sudo apt-get install openbox obconf

That downloads 21 MB of files, and then expands those onto 104 MB.

Installed a little panel and a small Calendar program:

sudo apt-get install tint2 gsimplecal

It downloads 2 MB of files, and then expands those onto 8 MB.

sudo apt-get install thunar thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin thunar-media-tags-plugin gvfs gvfs-backends

The thing downloads 22 MB of files, and then expands those onto 103 MB.

Logged out of X Window, restarted it, but still no Tint2 Panel nor a way to access Thunar yet.

So copied the file "/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart:  to "~/.config/openbox/autostart".

And then added to the bottom of the file:

tint2 &

thunar &

And then startx once again!

Out of the box, the whole thing looks as if a demon from hell has vomited scorpions on my eyes...

Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330 (II)

Made an upgrade to the "Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330" project.
Installed Lubuntu's key components on the little lappie.

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-core

After that apt-get, downloaded 221 MB and once extracted, used 805 MB of HDD.
With the whole thing on (Chromium, VLC, etc, etc) I'm using about 5 GB of the disk.
After that, pretty muchs everything works on the lappie, and, BTW, it performs amazingly, but really amazingly well for the hardware it has, (I mean c'mon, it only has 2 GB of freakin' RAM!!!!!).
I had to fight a bit with VLC to get it to play videos, un-mute by hand the sound card, and edit the "/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf" to get the WiFi card to work using the GUI, but things are golden so far...
Also, in order to customize themes easily, had to install this too:

sudo apt-get install lxappearance

Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330

A little fun with the old and trusty Dell M1330, yes it returned home after Mother got her Chromebook.
Slapped and old SATA drive and installed an Ubuntu MIni, after that:

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vacui--vg-root  291G  1.1G  276G   1% /

Just a little bit over 1 GB of HDD was used.
Added X Window, Openbox, Emacs, Elinks, OpenVPN, Tint2, PCmanfm, after all that, HDD usage jumped to:

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/vacui--vg-root  291G  1.7G  275G   1% /

Now comes the fun part... Configuring Openbox, hell, the whole system to my likings...

Say Hello To 2003

So today I got to play a bit with the old (really old) Sony Vaio PCG FRV37...
Wanted to test a bit the whole "Ubuntu Minimal install thing" (once again and just for old time sakes...) and make me a nice, slow, over burned and noisy Openbox lappie.
Well, yeah, no problem at all during the install, pretty much stock setup for nowadays (Encrypted LVM & encrypted $HOME) all things honky dory.
That is until the installation finished and the WiFi driver nightmare started...

Back to 2004 or so stuff...
The dreaded ath5k refused to give an stable connection, not even a ping to my GW, not to mention 8.8.8.8... Drop packets all around, 70% to simply begin with...
And no matter what options I gave to the /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf file and how many times I'd modprobed -r the module back and forth...
The same laptop with Linux Mint 17 works A Ok, will keep shitting with this, just because, since the hardware is way, way more than prehistoric...
Funny thing, once you enable the WiFi Card during the install, it works flawlessly...

Bunsenlabs On The Thinkpad T60p (II)

A couple of screenshots I took today, after customizing further the BunsenLabs install on the T60p.

Bunsenlabs On The Thinkpad T60p

Or Dark Was The Night...
Playing a bit with Bunsenlabs Linux on the trusty T60p, Openbox flies like a MF on the lappie...
This whole thing reminds me a lot of my days of Blackbox, more than a decade ago... Fuck it, I'm an old fart.