I have an older windows laptop onto which I'm installing ubuntu within a VM. My goal is just to use terminal-based linux tools such as vim and shell scripting. I don't give a hoot about any gui for this box.
So I first installed ubuntu minimalcd and chose "Basic Ubuntu Server". Upon boot, the text-based terminal came up and I logged in, but the problem is it only gives me 80 columns. I want to do terminal mode vim but have a couple hundred columns to take advantage of my large monitor. If you happen to know how to do that, please see my question here .
This post is assuming that the other question is not answerable, and that I will need a desktop to get more than 80 columns in a terminal window. So if that is the case, I want the lightest weight one possible, because this is older hardware and all I want is the ability to have nice big text-based terminal windows for editing text. From the ubuntu minimal CD, I see options for Edubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. Which one of the available desktops would be a good choice for my needs?
7 Answers
Edubuntu is just Ubuntu really, and Kubuntu runs the KDE environment, all of those are not lightweight.
If you are going for a desktop then you might be more interested in something like lubuntu or Xubuntu. Out of those I would think that Xubuntu is the lightest, although I'm not totally sure on that. Either way, both of those are extremely light-weight and designed for older hardware
For your needs I suggest you to have Lubuntu which needs a 256MB of RAM to work as i know. If you would like to have total Lubuntu stuff then you can use
sudo apt-get install lubuntu-destopIf you don't want any Lubuntu stuff then , type this in your terminal
sudo apt-get install lxdeIf you're looking for really light weight, then just skip a desktop environment altogether. You can just install Xorg and a terminal emulator such as terminator or even xterm. You don't need a display manager or even a window manager for your purposes. You can launch the emulator from X's startup script. Then, login and run startx.
If gou want a bit more look into one of the very many lightweight window managers. I used to use IceWm a long time ago, but there are lots of options to choose from.
3XFCE might be what you are looking for. If you want to try it out, here is the command to install it:
sudo apt-get install xfce4Once you complete that, logout. On your next login, click on the white Ubuntu icon.
You should then see a menu that allows you to pick which desktop you wish to use.
Click on "Xfce", and then continue entering your password.
How about skipping X altogether and staying with a CLI or server install only using vim (or my favorite text editor - emacs) as your "desktop".
Try using I3. It's a little difficult to use, but it's text-based, and incredibly light.
you gan go extreme , by installing just the plain debian os (aprrox 300mB iso)
and install a terminal(or use the inbuilt) and your required tools using apt(preinstalled in debian_os)
you can install xfce4 or gnome (or anything you want) on debian , just like ubuntu using the mighty apt
the installer asks if you want to download and install a desktop_environment or not,,, just skip that part , and you r good to go
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