Baslinux mailing list

[Matrix Mole <matrixm AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Thu, 27 May 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> I was using a 500MB hard drive for linux and it filled up only because I
> stored a lot of .tgz packages on it and compiled a bunch of large programs
> in the process of compiling lynx statically (in order to make it usable by
> people with older libraries).  I transferred my entire linux setup
> (programs I was actually using, not leftover compilations, plus 50MB of
> .tgz packages, plus 120M of compiler files for glibc 2.2.5) to other
> computers and it was only 250MB.  This includes 12MB of documentation on
> how to use something to do with databases that came with glibc, and perl,
> and nasm.  I can't imagine needing 1G unless I wanted to run only gui
> programs (of which I have only Opera, xpdf, and xv, and the package for
> realaudio).  How do people fill up 3G?  Is it by using desktops (gnome or
> kde or whatever it in fashion nowadays)?  Saving MP3s or 3 megapixel
> photos?   I have about 500MB of DOS files including photos and zip files.

I think that most standard distro install scripts assume that the user of
the system will be using the X gui exclusively (only doing command prompt
stuff with terminal programs inside X). That may be why they fill up so
much space alltogether (X does tend to eat a ton of HD space as I
discovered when first looking at setting it up on my BL system). I
personally don't care for the gui interface, and avoid it as much as
possible in any *nix environmen. Aside from web browsing, the GUI seems
pretty much un-needed by me (I'm an old school DOS CLI junkie).

Of course, theres also the additional software packages on the added discs
that come with most distro's. Stuff like word processor packages
(OpenOffice.Org or StarOffice), and other large programs as well. So I can
see how easy it'd be to fill 3-5 GB of HD space for modern distro.

Of course, I recal buying my very first 1GB drive when still using dos
6.22 and thinking, "I'll never fill this much space in this computers
lifetime." Nowdays, I'm lucky to have a CD-Burner for archiving stuff I'm
not using immediately just to free space on my 6GB HD in my Win2k machine.
Granted that does include some mp3's, but those almost immediately go onto
a data CD for storage purposes anway.

-- 
Matrix Mole
matrixm AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Running BasicLinux error free since May 15, 2004