Feedback thread for MX-Base ISO's

[nbarrera]

after trying to put limit down to 3gb on that conf file I was not able to select the partition for root

[dolphin_oracle]

after trying to put limit down to 3gb on that conf file I was not able to select the partition for root

hmm not sure, its supposed to override the size check.

this is the line to change

Code: Select all

#default smallest size to search for installable partitions
MIN_ROOT_DRIVE_SIZE=6000

4gb is probably still pushing it unless you use a compressed btrfs file system,

[m_pav]

When measured using gparted, the disk space occupied straight after installing and before the machine is started for the first time is 4.55GB, then after having booted into it once without doing anything else, shutting down and re-measured, it grows to 4.58GB. This is because the users /home folder is created and populated and some additional content is created to facilitate normal operation

Additionally, when the Ext4 partition is formatted prior to the installation, the standard procedure is to reserve a percentage for free space and 2% is the value applied. This reservation is vital when small partitions are involved, and the Linux standards are 5%, so they have already been tuned by our team to be more akin to the sizes of drives available today.

Furthermore, upgrades take space, that's how it is, and not provisioning sufficient free space will result in a hung system.

The absolute smallest partition I would use for / is 8GB and it would need a 2GB Minimum of swap.

If you wish to occupy a partition smaller than 8GB, then you really need to be looking at a LiveHD frugal install wnich will keep the highly compressed state of the linuxfs file that is otherwise expanded when doing a regular install.

Please see https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/frugal-installation/

----- EDITED ----- Original post had measurements from the wrong ISO, now corrected

[nbarrera]

Yes, I 've tried with that option, no luck yet...

But I 'm more and more convinced that as you said 4gb is too small.

I 've been reading more on the subject in the forum and I think I will try a frugal_static install on the 4gb ssd.
maybe I will start making questions about it on a separate thread

sorry guys,
thanks for your support

[dolphin_oracle]

Yes, I 've tried with that option, no luck yet...

But I 'm more and more convinced that as you said 4gb is too small.

I 've been reading more on the subject in the forum and I think I will try a frugal_static install on the 4gb ssd.
maybe I will start making questions about it on a separate thread

sorry guys,
thanks for your support

there is one other thing you might try, although its a little weird.

you could just use live-usb-maker to take over the entire 4GB drive on the system just like you would a live-usb. there is an option to not filter out internal drives in live-usb-maker. It would essentially be just like a frugal install without having to mess around with a boot loader. but it will wipe and repartition the entire drive just like it does with live-usb devices. I've done this in virtualbox machines but never on real hardware, so its just theoretical at the moment.

you wouln't have a whole lot of room left for updates and persistence files though. you would need to remaster early and often.

[agnivo007]

By any chance is the 4GB SSD a SATA DOM? Quite popular component in thin clients and industrial appliances...
I've been looking for a 8/16/32GB one but hard to get here, also quite niche old product.

If you are successful in tuning the min install partition size, try the brtfs-lzo as suggested, I'm also eager to know the results!

[agnivo007]

BTW, installed the XFCE-base-x64 on my thin client (see signature) and experience is - rock solid and faster boot times than the official xfce release.

Removed some stuff like adobe-flash,advert-block,mc,xfburn,mx-docs,extra icon themes.
Bluetooth and scanner services disabled as I have no use.
Cleaned up with bleachbit root (usual + removed locales except EN), updated all stuff.
Installed plymouth hamara theme (boot looked too naked, got used to plymouth, lol)
Disk usage stands at 4.9GB now. So far, looks this would be my daily driver on the thin client PC.

SUGGESTION: Remove tango-icon-theme and faenza-icon-theme, they show no dependencies while removed and save 100MB on installed space.

[asqwerth]

Are you sure tela icons were preinstalled? I don't even think it's in our repos, let alone Debian's.

[agnivo007]

I might have mistaken as I did that yesterday, but whatever it was, that's the last entry in appearance>icons section on a clean install.

Update: It is tango-icon-theme, corrected earlier post.

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Start-Date: 2020-10-13  11:47:29
Commandline: apt-get -o=Dpkg::Use-Pty=0 remove -y faenza-icons
Requested-By: roy (1000)
Remove: faenza-icons:amd64 (0.1.0mx19)
End-Date: 2020-10-13  11:47:45

Start-Date: 2020-10-13  11:48:46
Commandline: apt-get -o=Dpkg::Use-Pty=0 remove -y tango-icon-theme
Requested-By: roy (1000)
Remove: tango-icon-theme:amd64 (0.8.90-7)
End-Date: 2020-10-13  11:48:52

[m_pav]

Cleaned up with bleachbit root (usual + removed locales except EN), updated all stuff.

I hope you used the locales tool to uncheck all the unwanted locales first

SUGGESTION: Remove tango-icon-theme and faenza-icon-theme, they show no dependencies while removed and save 100MB on installed space.

While no deps are listed for the tango theme, I found it was used for at least one element, though I can't remember which one, so I retained it in the ISO.