Absolute minimal install of Linux....

SouperComputer

I'm looking for some "local knowledge" as to how I can make the most effiicient, fastest booting lightweight OS on my machine to run MythTV. Basically I want to make it customised and optimised for the hardware that its running on.
I've heard of monolithic kernels and whatnot, and Im wondering if anyone has some resources that they would reccomend for such a task.

I playing with gentoo on bochs now to get a feel for how I am going to go about optimising things. Is this the best distro to start with? It seems to have excellent guides to get setup anyway.

Any pointers appriciated.

Nietzschean

i really wouldn't bother with gentoo myself, most linux distro's well let you install a very cut down version of teh OS, then just recompile the kernel so its only got h/w u have in it, can keep extra modules lie'n about aslong as they arnt' loaded on boot...
even in networking protocols if you disable things liek the AppleTalk protocol with you probally don't use but most kernel's load it speeds things up...

ntlbell

start with damnsmallinux and add/remove as needed?

Khannie

I found an article before which uses the ubuntu server install with xfce (or maybe another lightweight window manager) added afterwards. This way you have the benefit of being able to get myth from the ubuntu repositories. You're not really going to get much more lightweight than that tbh. It's the 80:20 rule after that point. 80% of the effort for 20% of the gain (probably more like 95:5).

I may have it bookmarked, but I'd say you can find it with google handy enough.

Edit: Otherwise, gentoo might be an option for you. It's highly customisable, and compiled for your system. You can also get myth installed on gentoo with ease AFAIK.

SouperComputer

Khannie wrote:

I found an article before which uses the ubuntu server install with xfce (or maybe another lightweight window manager) added afterwards. This way you have the benefit of being able to get myth from the ubuntu repositories. You're not really going to get much more lightweight than that tbh. It's the 80:20 rule after that point. 80% of the effort for 20% of the gain (probably more like 95:5).

I may have it bookmarked, but I'd say you can find it with google handy enough.

Sounds like a good place to start, ill have a search now.

Edit: Otherwise, gentoo might be an option for you. It's highly customisable, and compiled for your system. You can also get myth installed on gentoo with ease AFAIK.

I came across a lot of good guides for gentoo and MythTV, so that was very encouraging but it wont even install for me! One thing or another wont compile for me during the setup. Im working on VMware until i'm happy enough with what I'm doing, so maybe thats putting a spanner in the works. Initally I tried two custom make.conf files, they both failed then I tried defaults and after 7 hours (P4 3.0 @ 3.7) of compiliing it bombed out on the installation of xine. I had hoped it was bootable, but it freezed on "SMP Alternatives: Switching to UP mode"

I can feel the beard growing already!

/Sigh

No I know I can go research the issues I'm having, but this is not a good start. I'm installing from the livecd version 2006.1. Ill try the minimal disk, grab the stage3 tarball from the web and hopefully it will work!

In other news though, I found a great notes taking app. Its java based so its cross platform. I writes in XML format and is fairly basic but its made my note-taking much easier.

Checkout Notes Master, http://notesmaster.sourceforge.net/.

It's great, throw the java app and notes on a fileserver and fire it up from any OS on your network.


Edit, just rebooted the VMachine for the third time and gentoo booted to command line. Cant login though. Meh

Khannie

You'll almost definitely have trouble with gentoo on vmware. vmware is creating a virtual machine and gentoo's looking for a real one to compile on. Don't get me wrong, vmware's good, but compiling your OS from the ground up on a virtual machine will result in a bug or two in the virtual machine being exposed.

If you're using vmware, I'd try the ubuntu server route. Ubuntu 6.10 is just out and has myth 0.20 in the multiverse repositories.

Alternatively, is dual boot an option?

fishfoodie

Absolutely the best HOWTO I've ever seen.

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

Worked perfectly for me & theres a lot of folks used this platform so you can usually find someone who can help you with any problems you have !

Khannie

Found that guide. It's for Dapper (6.06) but you should use edgy (6.10) for your install. Myth installation on edgy is as simple as adding the multiverse repository to your apt sources (check here) and using synaptic or apt-get to install with one command.

The other stuff in that guide (using server install, then adding 686 kernel, etc.) is all useful information for a minimal install.

I got my installation done and everything up and running in a few hours the last time (with 6.06). If you're new to unix / linux, expect it to take a day or more of fluting.

Khannie

fishfoodie wrote:

Absolutely the best HOWTO I've ever seen.

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

I tried this the first time I gave myth a bash (about 20 months ago). I had some terrible trouble with it, though myth installation was still in a relative infancy (there were ivtv driver stability issues at the time for example). The guide is extensive, but doesn't aim for a minimal install (or didn't when I tried it).

SouperComputer

Well ive been playing with the ubuntu server install and so far its been great. Vr impressed, lightweight and easy to work with!

I have: LAMP, Xwindows, xMAME, SAMBA, slimserver, firefox, konqueror, k3b and jr installed and it boots MUCH faster than gentoo did. Very impressed!