// Running Fat Distros on Thin Hardware
//
// by dual_parallel
//
// http://www.oldskoolphreak.com

	Boy, the new KDE sure looks good - Keramik theme, Crystal icons,
transparency, shadows...  That's all fine and good - if you're running
a P4!  Most of us don't have the jack (or the need) to run the hottest
hardware.  But we all want the latest in GNU/Linux - the latest hardware
support, the latest development environments, etc.  There's no better
way to get everything you want on the hardware you have than by thinning
down your distro.
	This article will go over some great ways to shave precious
megabytes off of your install and your memory usage.  If it happens to
be too distro or application specific, too bad.  Take the information
and adapt it - create something new.
	First, let's talk hardware.  If you have a 486 laying around,
awesome.  You can run X on a 486, but it's probably not recommended.
Just ditch X, which is the best way to slim down you distro by the way.
(If you're running Linux on a 486, you probably don't want X anyway.)
Next, we have Pentium processors.  With lots of memory, you can run X
with a tiny window manager (to be discussed later).  On PIIs, up to
about 350 MHz, it is possible to run GNOME 1.4 or KDE 2.2, albeit very
slow.  After that, you don't need this article.
	Memory was mentioned, and here's the gist of it: Install as
much as you can.  Memory for older systems is dirt cheap and plentiful.
Check electronic surplus stores, thrift stores, Ebay, the cushions of
your couch - you can find the SIMMs you need.  On to the distro.
	One way to slim down your distro is to not choose the latest,
bloated offerings (SuSE 8.1, Red Hat 8.0, Mandrake 9.0).  Beyond the
fact that they're probably buggy, it's simplicity itself to upgrade the
kernel/packages of previous distros.
	Optimizing your distro during the install is the next, and an
important step.  Choosing KDE or GNOME may be advisable if the apps you
really want have to have the latest Qt or GTK and you don't want any
dependency problems.  Don't worry, you won't be using them as your your
main desktop environment.  Now choose custom install and hand pick every
app you want/need and deselect every one you don't.  Don't worry, most
modern Linux distros handle dependencies pretty well.  You'll probably
only end up with a few packages that you didn't want.  And skip the
graphical login.
	Now you've got a working system.  But man is it slow with the
installed KDE or GNOME.  Well now we're going to ditch it and use a
smaller window manager, spefically, IceWM (the test machine for this
article was a PII 266 running Red Hat 7.3).
	Create a user and login.  Install IceWM and create an
".xinitrc" file in your home directory.  Use vi and add one line to
the file - "exec icewm".  Next time you login/reboot IceWM should be
your window manager (Infidel2 is the coolest theme, btw).  You should
also notice much faster boot and response times.  Type "free" at a
console before and after installing IceWM should you want to see
numbers.  Other window managers to consider are Blackbox and Fluxbox.
Has anyone ever used Matchbox on a desktop?
	What good is a tight window manager if you have to use Netscape,
Mozilla, or Konqueror.  Well, you don't.  Two small, fast and
surprisingly well-rendering replacements are Galeon and Dillo.
	Galeon is included in most modern distros, so just select it
during the install process.  When running Galeon for the first time, it
may be a good idea not to choose to use the smart toolbar/tabbed
browsing features.  Don't overcomplicate a good browser.  The downside
to Galeon is that it requires Mozilla to be installed, both using the
Gecko rendering engine.  This brings up Dillo.
	Unless you use Opera on a handheld, Dillo will probably be the
smallest browser you'll ever use - the tarball is a whopping 303 KB.
You can download the latest Dillo, 0.6.6, at

http://dillo.cipsga.org.br/download.html

Once installed, you have to copy the "dillorc" file found in the dillo
directory to your new .dillo directory.  A perl script, dilloconf.pl, is
included at the end of this text that will copy and configure dillorc
based on user input.
	One last part that adds security as well, is to shut down uneeded
services in inetd or xinetd.  And on Red Hat, you can use "chkconfig" to
stop services found in rc.d.  For example, to shut off sendmail, enter the
command

chkconfig --level 2345 sendmail off

and you'll notice the absence of sendmail during boot-up.  If you're
using a tower, shut down apmd.  No mattter what kind of box you're using,
shut down wine.  In addition, perform a little kernel optimization by
cd'ing to /usr/src/linux-2.4.X-X and typing "make menuconfig".
	If you're reading this, you probably use console apps most of the
time anyway.  But go ahead and treat yourself to a little GUI action.
You can even theme/customize your desktop, which is a lot of fun in the
author's opinion, and stay fast.  With a thinned-down distro you can
have the best of both worlds.

*************************************************************************

#!/usr/bin/perl

system("/usr/bin/clear");

print "dilloconf.pl - configures dillorc\n";
print "---------------------------------\n";

# Get working directory
print "From what directory did you install Dillo? (ex. /home/user): ";
chomp( $home = <> );

# Check that dillo has been installed and run
if ( -d "$home/.dillo" ) {
	print "\n>> Dillo is installed. Proceeding...";
}
else {
	die "\n>> Check your directory input or run Dillo once before running dilloconf.\n\n";
}

# Get Dillo version
print "\n\nWhat version of Dillo are you using? (ex. dillo-0.6.6): ";
chomp( $dil_ver = <> );

# Customize dillorc
print "\nWhat size do you want the initial browser window to be? (ex. 1024x768): ";
chomp( $scr_res = <> );
print "\nWhat do you want to set your home page to? (ex. www.2600.com): ";
chomp( $hm_page = <> );
print "\nDo you use a proxy to connect to the Internet? (y or n): ";
chomp( $ans = <> );
if ($ans =~ /y/) {
	print "\nWhat is the name/IP of the proxy server? (ex. 123.45.67.89:8080): ";
	chomp( $prox_ip = <> );
}
else {
	$prox_ip = "#http_proxy=http://localhost:8080/"
} 

open(INPUT, "$home/$dil_ver/dillorc") || die "\n>> Double-check your directory input then rerun dilloconf.\n\n";
open(OUTPUT, ">$home/.dillo/dillorc");

while (<INPUT>) {
	s/640x550/$scr_res/;
	s/dillo\.sourceforge\.net/$hm_page/;
	s/dillo\.cipsga\.org\.br/$hm_page/;
	if ( $prox_ip =~ /#http_proxy=http:\/\/localhost:8080\// ) {
		s/#http_proxy=http:\/\/localhost:8080\//#http_proxy=http:\/\/localhost:8080\//;
	}
	else {
		s/#http_proxy=http:\/\/localhost:8080\//http_proxy=http:\/\/$prox_ip\//;
	}
	print OUTPUT;
}

close(INPUT);
close(OUTPUT);

print "\n>> Config complete.\n\n";

*************************************************************************