Go2Linux | Linux Operating System

Just like The light weight Debian we can do the same with Fedora, I will use Fedora 8 and Fluxbox to install a light Desktop Linux.

First start the installation CD, I have chosen the text environment as, this is supposed to be a light installation, I am doing this on VMware with 128 Kbytes of memory assigned.

Once you get to the package selection screen be sure to have something like this:

So you can select later which software to install, then on the next window, when you are selecting individual packages select these:

• Administration tools
• Development tools
• Editors
• Hardware support
• Text-based Internet

Once you have finished the installation, you will have a very light Fedora, with only the minimal software installed on it, you can no use the ntsysv to disable the daemons you will not use, like bluetooth, ISDN, CUPS in my case.

Read this great post to decide which daemons you need and which you do not.

Once that is finished, lets start installing the X environment.

yum install xorg-x11-server-Xorg

To install the Xserver itself

yum install xorg-x11-xinit.i386

The xinit scripts, like startx

yum install xorg-x11-drv-vmware

The driver I need, you can look for yours using

yum search drv | less

This will list all the drivers available, or use the vesa driver which usually works with all cards, by installing

yum install xorg-x11-drv-vesa.i386

and then you can download the ATI or Nvidia drivers form their sites.

yum install xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse

This is the driver I needed for mouse under vmware,

Now we are ready to install fluxbox

yum install fluxbox

And to configure the Xserver

yum install system-config-display

which you can run issuing:

systemc-config-display

and selecting the right options according to your hardware there.

Now lets create our init script

vim $HOME/.initrc

And be sure this line is inside:

exec startfluxbox

Ok, we are done, you can now start installing your favorite tools like

yum install xterm feh audacious alsa-utils.i386

Being feh the image viewer, audacious the music player and alsa-utils the volume control, of course you will have to install other tools, at your discretion.

Check here the difference between a normal Fedora Installation, with nothing but a term and htop running against our light weight Fedora.

Light Fedora Normal Fedora

An image is better than a thousand words, so no comments here :)

Enjoy your light weight Fedora with Fluxbox