Dear Ubuntu forum,
I am a beginner who is deciding to switch my laptop from Puppy Linux, a lightweight distro, to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS so that I can have the same OS that my University uses.
One thing that I don't like is having a lot of default programs and background services that I never use - the bloat associated with bigger OS's. I'm curious if it would be easier to download the regular 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 and then delete some programs or if I should start out with the Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" Minimal CD and then use the command "sudo apt-get install" to install the programs I do need one by one. My guess would be that the second would take less time overall, but there would be something important that I would forget to install or some extra technical difficulty would might pop up, but I'm not sure. I'm not exactly sure what I would need to install.
Note that my memory space is pretty limited - I typically use a 2Gb usb as a portable hard drive that contains my OS and all my files - so smallness is a convenience, but so is all-around stability and functionality. Besides the very basic software like a terminal, sound driver, laptop power management, GUI window, laptop touchpad driver, wifi driver, and WiFi network connection tool, the only programs that I plan on using anytime soon are Google Chrome, AbiWord, a plain text editor, the Java Runtime Environment, Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF reader plugin, and Eclipse. I don't even need a log-in manager like gdm - supposedly I can just edit .bash_profile or /etc/inttab and go straight into the genome-shell GUI without needing to see the log in screen.
One thing that I do to increase the battery life (by like 40%) and cut disk use on my laptop is I boot Puppy Linux into RAM or I boot the live media and put everything in the default RAM Disk (my laptop is getting upgraded from 4Gb of RAM to 8Gb of RAM, so RAM has got room). I know that Ubuntu doesn't boot into RAM like Puppy, but it does have a live CD. Can I use the Ubuntu live CD as a full fledged, fully functional minimal OS the way I use the Puppy Live CD? Also, can I get or make a minimalist live media version of the Ubuntu live CD - just like the official live CD version but with a lot less things preinstalled?
What's the best way for me to go about making the transition from Puppy Live Media to Ubuntu 12.04?
I am a beginner who is deciding to switch my laptop from Puppy Linux, a lightweight distro, to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS so that I can have the same OS that my University uses.
One thing that I don't like is having a lot of default programs and background services that I never use - the bloat associated with bigger OS's. I'm curious if it would be easier to download the regular 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 and then delete some programs or if I should start out with the Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" Minimal CD and then use the command "sudo apt-get install" to install the programs I do need one by one. My guess would be that the second would take less time overall, but there would be something important that I would forget to install or some extra technical difficulty would might pop up, but I'm not sure. I'm not exactly sure what I would need to install.
Note that my memory space is pretty limited - I typically use a 2Gb usb as a portable hard drive that contains my OS and all my files - so smallness is a convenience, but so is all-around stability and functionality. Besides the very basic software like a terminal, sound driver, laptop power management, GUI window, laptop touchpad driver, wifi driver, and WiFi network connection tool, the only programs that I plan on using anytime soon are Google Chrome, AbiWord, a plain text editor, the Java Runtime Environment, Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF reader plugin, and Eclipse. I don't even need a log-in manager like gdm - supposedly I can just edit .bash_profile or /etc/inttab and go straight into the genome-shell GUI without needing to see the log in screen.
One thing that I do to increase the battery life (by like 40%) and cut disk use on my laptop is I boot Puppy Linux into RAM or I boot the live media and put everything in the default RAM Disk (my laptop is getting upgraded from 4Gb of RAM to 8Gb of RAM, so RAM has got room). I know that Ubuntu doesn't boot into RAM like Puppy, but it does have a live CD. Can I use the Ubuntu live CD as a full fledged, fully functional minimal OS the way I use the Puppy Live CD? Also, can I get or make a minimalist live media version of the Ubuntu live CD - just like the official live CD version but with a lot less things preinstalled?
What's the best way for me to go about making the transition from Puppy Live Media to Ubuntu 12.04?