What are the core packages for a desktop's Linux desktop distribution 3935

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 08:47:24 -0700, Artificer

One way to go about this would be to choose a particular distribution and simply install the minimum amount of packages that you need from that distribution. Gentoo would be a particularly good choice for this task.

I'm going to buttume here that you don't want to do that, but rather want to gather all the required source files and compile them yourself; and write the configuration files yourself, etc; presumably to get an understanding of how Linux works and to really customise-minimise things.

Artificer I'm not a guru either but where I have experience I'll share what I know-think. Your use of the term package is a bit confusing because usually packages are buttociated with distributions; I'm buttuming you mean a logical grouping of commands-config files-etc that come from a common place and are built together. I'll let you know when I know what package the apps I mention come from; otherwise you'll have to find them yourself.

Go with the most recent stable one available. If using modules, you'll need the modules tools - this is a package including modprobe, lsmod, etc. Check out the hotplug program too if you want devices to be created on demand - build this option into the kernel.

For parbreastioning I like parted because it allows you to move and resize parbreastions, but the standard fdisk does the job.

You'll need the mount command as well.

I'd suggest ext3 rather than ext2 - journalling means quick fsck on reboot if power fails. You'll need the tools that come with it - mke2fs, tune2fs etc - the package is called e2fsprogs and can be found at separate command to make an ext3 filesystem - you use the same command as for ext2 (mke2fs) but just add a -j option for journalling. ext3 is the same on disk as ext2 except that it has a journal file so they're very compatible.

You'll need the ppp package - pppd, chat, pon and poff do the job well. If you want a little more dialling automation, wvdial is good. Sometimes setserial is required to set port properties; I don't have it installed and haven't needed it.

I don't have DSL and the only time I've used DSL with Linux was with a Smoothwall firewall and the DSL was ethernet bridged, so there was no DSL-specific setup - I can't comment on it except to say that it can be pretty simple if you use a DSL modem with an ethernet port and let it handle the ppp and then simply send that on to your Linux box's ethernet card. Otherwise I don't whether the standard pppd handles it or you need a specific ppp-over-ethernet program.

NFS is handier but as far as I know not generally supported with a Windows based client. For an NFS server you need to have portmap, mountd, statd. Optionally lockd. As well as NFS support compiled into the kernel.

If you want to share with Windows users, Samba is good.

There are many ftp servers to choose from - I have no preference but proftpd seems to be pretty popular - probably designed more for a large hosting server than a personal machine though.

Depends on whether your sound driver is ALSA or OSS (older and deprecated). I don't use sound much but when I do I use the aumix program for mixer settings (including master volume) under ALSA. As for playback, mplayer is very comprehensive in its support for all sorts of audio and video formats and it doesn't need an X server for audio playback. It does have a graphical X interface if you want one. You really don't need anything else for simple playback, but if you want playlist features then you will need other programs.

I've never built X from scratch on my own - I've done it under Gentoo but that's automated. No doubt you can simply download the source from Xorg or XFree86 with instructions and for a basic installation you wouldn't need more than that. As for Gnome, if you are going for minimalism, I wouldn't install it - you don't need it. It's not necessary for most (all?) programs. Instead look at a featureful or minimalist window manager - I've heard talk of IceWM, Enlightenment, AfterStep, WindowMaker, ... there are a tonne of them. Others will have more informed opinions.

A desktop system like Gnome or KDE includes a window manager but also a lot more stuff that you don't need under minimalism. Things like a sound server, panels with quickstart buttons and little gadgets - many window managers also provide these, print services, a general 'environment' with a help system etc, and in the case of KDE, a pretty comprehensive control panel.

gnome-based - for some programs to run but you certainly don't need the whole Gnome desktop. Check the library requirements for the apps that you want to run.

You may want some kind of X terminal program - eg xterm - but if you are being very minimal you could do without and use the standard text virtual consoles.

Study the whole X windows environment and your options here a bit before deciding what you want. It's possible to be very minimalist... eg when I first ran Linux it was on a 486 with 8Meg RAM and a 500Mb hard disk, shared with a DOS parbreastion. It installed and ran X fine - loading up Netscape might have induced some swapping but nothing you couldn't live with.

There is no unix 'format' command; each filesystem type goes about it differently - eg for ext2-3 it's mke2fs.

I've never tried to find their source packages, but the commands I would suggest are: *a shell - I like bash. *basic filesystem commands: ls, cp, mv, rm, rmdir, etc... *unix io commands: dd, cpio (never used this myself but you may) *networking commands: netstat, ifconfig, route, ping *typical unix utilities: (you may not need these) grep, sed, awk, cut, sort, wc, time, perl?, python?, etc... *internet: (you may not need some of these) ftp client (ncftp is good), ssh client-server, telnet (largely superseded by ssh), lynx (cmd-line browser), wget (downloading tool). *NAT-filtering-firewalling: iptables *compression-archiving: bzip2, gzip, unzip, uncompress, tar *date-time: date *nifty utilities: lspci - info on the pci-based cards in your machine No doubt I've left stuff out ... best to just install as you find a need if you're really going for minimalism.

As far as I know you don't need Gnome for these although you will need certain libraries. You will require a java virtual machine for Openoffice. For other dependencies check out their homepages.

For user-group management: pbuttwd, useradd, usermod, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, chsh, chfn are all basic needs. For filesystem access: chmod is essential; also chown, chattr are handy; also umask.

How much management do you want? eg do you need records of what is installed; do you need dependency management? If so check out Debian's apt-get tools or Gentoo's portage tools (emerge, etc). Personally I rate Gentoo's tools as more stable than Debian's... I found Debian stuffed up its database files to the point where the tools became almost unusable. Either of these toolsets would require some study to become proficient at package creation.

If you don't need that much management, then sure, a homebrew system of tarring and zipping files - perhaps with a generic install script that runs a specific script in the package if found - would work well.

I don't know of any, but then again I haven't made an attempt to find any... as far as I know gnome doesn't have anything like this. No doubt someone has created something that will do some of these jobs but I would be surprised if there is a free fully integrated package that does all that. For the filesystem and permissions you could use some sort of graphical browser if you absolutely don't want to use the command line - but those that come with Gnome and KDE are pretty bloated - I'm sure you could find something more minimal.

You have forgotten the most important thing - a compiler and related tools - linker, make, automake etc. This being linux you will of course use gcc, least of all because building the kernel depends on gcc-specific features.

You may choose not to install a compiler on your all machines but you will need it installed on at least one - how else will you build your system?

Well that's my input and if anyone else responds they can just correct any mistakes or add to the relevant sections, the bulk of it should be out of the way...