[LBo] Distros...

[Douglas Orchard]

> Allen wrote:
> > Hi gang,
> > 
> > The questions I have are:
> > 
> >     1) Xubuntu says a swap of 1 gig, but the old formula I
> >        remember is 2x installed memory. I have a gig of
> >        memory so should I really use a 2 gig swap?
> 
> It's an 'old' formula because it's just that. It works good for 256MB or
> so, but with 1GB or more of memory, it all depends on what you are
> doing. I've seen a Kubuntu installation run fine in a laptop with 512MB
> and no swap at all. Over time, you'll figure out the amount of memory
> you usually will be using.

I would look at how big the harddrive is and what can you spare for
swap.  Use "top" or similar to see how much memory is being used by all
the simultaneous programs.  If it is nearly 3Gb the 1Gb of ram and 2Gb
of swap is good. If it is less than 512Mb then 2Gb of swap is excessive.
Many programs use some swap, even if they dont need to, so 512Mb swap is
probably the minimum.

> 
> > 
> >     2) Xubuntu says only other partition needed one with a
> >        mount point of /. Is this really the way to go or
> >        should I have a partition for /boot as well? If so
> >        how big, 128 meg?
> 
> That's correct. All that is needed is / partition. I usually add a /home
> as well, and /data or something is not a bad idea. /boot is not needed
> as most laptop system bios' will not have the 1024 cylinder issue that
> required a very small bootable partition.

Theoretically / is all that is needed but for crash recovery I use the
following:
/
/boot (mounted "RO")
/home (all my docs, data, personalised config files, go here)
/var (/var/tmp and apt-get stuff goes here. If it fills up and chokes it
wont crash the whole system.)

> 
> >     
> >     3) Back to the distro question. I do a lot of information
> >        test logs. Does this make sense? If so is Xubuntu a
> >        good choice? Others I've looked at include PCLinuxOS,
> >        rPath, gNewSense, BLAG and DSL. I've even thought of
> >        going with PC-BSD. My real goal is stability with a
> >        minimum of fuss and constant fiddling with updates.
> >        Suggestions?
> 
> Distros with package management such as Debian or Ubuntu or derivatives
> make updates almost a non-issue. The former uses older packages for
> stability, and the latter has a 6 month cycle for new releases.

If stability is an issue use Debian (Stable) and just do the security
updates.


-- 
Douglas Orchard

Registered Linux User
# 206698