[Gllug] Best single CD Linux distro

[Matthew Cooke]

> Hi,
> 
> I use Ubuntu, and it's very much my preferred distro. On the Ubuntu 
> Sounder list recently, there were discussions about spreading Ubuntu 
> around the world, especially in conjunction with recycling 
> organisations like Computer Aid (I did a bit of volunteering there a 
> few years back).
> 
>   Ubuntu has the following advantages for you:
> 1: Absolutely free.
> 2: Designed to 'just work' - no one should have to edit a config file, 
> GUI tools for everything.
> 3: Secure (no services on by default) and rock solid.
> 4: Internationalisation efforts very prominent, both in providing 
> languages and in setting up an infrastructure (rosetta) for more 
> languages to be added.
> 5: Develops quickly, bugs get fixed, things get made easier for the 
> user on a daily basis.
> 6: Single cd by design. Comes as a live cd and an install version.
> 7: Good hardware detection; most of the problems here I think are with 
> very new machines and dodgy laptops.
> 8: Curses based installer. Personally, I find these much easier than 
> the graphical ones of  Red Hat and Mandrake. For low spec machines, the 
> eye candy is too heavy. It's based on the very fine Debian installer, 
> and is smoothy and simple to use.
> 9: Word compatability via Open Office and Abiword - I think the distro 
> playing field is level here. There is a Wine developer doing some work 
> for Ubuntu, so if there are old copies of Word lying around, it might 
> just have an edge.
> 10: great community of users and developers, and the backing of Mark 
> Shuttleworth / Canonical, who have put their money where their mouth is 
> (giving free cds away to anyone who wants them.)
> 
> The only major disadvantage I can see is with resources:
> 64mb is not very much. I installed it on a 233mhz / 64mb ram, and it 
> was slow as molasses. Doubled the ram and got a much better 
> performance.
> Out of the box, it comes with Gnome desktop. (There's another version 
> currently in beta with KDE). This is just too heavy for low spec 
> machines. Using XFCE or something similar is essential.
> 
> Against this, there are many people who are interested in doing an 
> Ubuntu Lite - there's  been discussion of this on the ubuntu-users 
> list, and a mini-ram howto page is up on the wiki. (The homepage is:
> http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html )
> Projects like recycling computers and helping the global south get 
> technology are very much a part of the core Ubuntu idea, and that is 
> one of the aims
> 
> if you are going to burn thousands of CDs, I'd consider getting a 
> customised distro. That might sound like more trouble than it's worth, 
> but with the community (users and developers) behind you, it will 
> proceed pretty quickly, and provide long term support.
> 
> I'd very much like to get involved in this.
> 
> Regards
> 
> John
> 
> 
-- 
Matthew Cooke <mpcooke3 at lineone.net>

Hi John,

Thanks for your email. I did some rough timings on Ubuntu this
afternoon:

Ubuntu Linux 400Mhz PII 64Meg Dell Optiplex
              * Boot time - 3 minutes
              * OpenOffice? - 2 minutes
              * Firefox - 25 Seconds
              * Evolution - 25 Seconds

      * Ubuntu Linux 400Mhz PII 128Meg Dell Optiplex
              * Boot time - 2:10 minutes
              * OpenOffice? - 52 seconds
              * Firefox - 13 Seconds
              * Evolution - 13 Seconds

As you can see OpenOffice is the worse performing component by far which
would probably be the case on most systems and i'm not convinced
switching to XFCE will help much.

I think I'd rather stick with a standard distro if at all possible. I
have done some work on a more complex network based install that could
push any distro onto the machines and I may look at a custom Ubuntu
distro for that later (If they are still interested in pre-installing at
ComputerAid).

Overall Ubuntu seems like possibly the only choice given KDE memory
requirements and the requirements to have it on a single CD and easy
installation. Although the openoffice load time of 2 minutes on a 64Meg
machine wasn't great it did work once it had loaded and I believe we are
currently only shipping around 23% 64Meg machines so it won't be too
long till 128Meg becomes minimum spec anyway.

The offer to burn CDs comes from the UN who have offered to do it for
free and I kind of think it would be better to take them up on it before
they or someone else loses interest - rather than dithering too long
over the possibility of a custom distros etc, They originally offered us
Morphix but it wouldn't load well on 64Meg and the install to disk
option required using cfdisk so I've been delaying things a bit till we
could find something more suitable.

Matt.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug