Ubuntu 10.04 lighter Gnome desktop

Half size screen grab of my basic Gnome desktop

A stock install of the Ubuntu 10.04 long term support release uses a fair amount of RAM on start up, around 250Mb or so. By installing the base system (command line only) and then adding a bare bones Gnome desktop, you can cut that to just under 100Mb. As you are building the system from the command line up, you can also choose which applications you want to install, and reflect this choice in a simpler main menu. Lucid has security updates until April 2013 so you can get plenty of work done without fiddling with the operating system!

Installing the operating system

Based on the page at Web2Linux, and K Mandla's Lighter Gnome I decided to

Download the minimal install iso (only 14Mb, but you end up downloading about 470Mb) and burn it to a CD-ROM
Boot the Thinkpad with a wired network connection running off my router/modem
Press enter at the Boot: prompt
Select CLI Install (second on the list of options)
Follow the instructions for the text mode installer, I chose the manual partition option as I wanted to shrink the Windows XP partition on this laptop. The text installer is very similar to the Alternate Install CD, especially the way the partition editor works.
I opted to manually update the software, but you can choose any of the options...
Log in at the prompt
Install xorg, basic desktop funtionality, laptop power management tools and wifi networking using the command below...

sudo apt-get install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome laptop-mode-tools indicator-applet-session notify-osd light-themes gnome-screensaver gconf-editor

What do you get?

Ubuntu full and lighter Gnome System menus compared

This basic desktop has Terminal, Gedit, Gwibber, Synaptic, the various System | Preference commands, but with some missing such as the Disk Utility (aka partition editor). The screen grab montage above compares the System | Preferences and System | Administration menus for the full ubuntu (left, upper) with the lighter Gnome version (right and below). It is worth noting that the screen grabs were taken after installing the application software.

With a 150 minute battery life, I close the lid when not actually typing or surfing. I've set power management options so that closing the lid or pressing Fn-Sleep goes to suspend as hibernate to disk never seems to work. I found it necessary to install the gnome-screensaver package to ensure that the trackpad/mouse restarted when bringing the laptop out of suspend mode. I found that installing the laptop-mode-tools package made a significant difference to the battery life of the thinkpad laptop.

I have to admit that I've installed gconf-editor for the sole purpose of changing the window buttons from the left to the right in the Radience theme. Needless to say, there are no desktop effects available with this lighter Gnome.

Applications

With a bare bones operating system installed, you can make your choice of what application software to install. I chose a few basics...

sudo apt-get install firefox openoffice.org gimp mpg321

The only unusual thing there is the command line music player mpg321. I use this laptop for writing handouts and producing presentations, and little music while I work is fine but it's not meant to be a multimedia box. Some use Chome as the Web browser, I use Firefox because of the Zotero referencing plug in. Open Office has a good maths formula editor, and does not flicker when typing long paragraphs (try typing a long paragraph into Abiword on a laptop with a slowish video card...)

I work a dropbox account between the desktop PC, the laptop (both partitions), and a Windows based work laptop. I wonder how I ever managed before without a cloud based synchronised folder, I strongly recommend setting up an account - the 2Gb free account is plenty for my critical work files. I hope Ubuntu One develops a Windows client by the time I need more than 2Gb of storage and so have to start paying for the service. The Linux Dropbox client only works with Nautilus on Gnome although there are workarounds. There is a memory cost - another 30Mb or so for the dropbox daemon.

Memory use

Below is a copy of the top list of processes sorted by memory use just after a fresh boot (the 'RES' heading being a close approach to the actual memory in use I believe).

top - 21:00:44 up 0 min,  2 users,  load average: 1.43, 0.49, 0.17
Tasks: 149 total,   1 running, 148 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.3%us,  0.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 97.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1025928k total,   280772k used,   745156k free,    27548k buffers
Swap:   860152k total,        0k used,   860152k free,   122176k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            
 1518 keith     20   0 82052  30m  14m S  0.3  3.1   0:01.16 dropbox            
 1492 keith     20   0 41816  18m  10m S  0.0  1.8   0:00.66 gnome-panel        
  835 root      20   0 31988  17m 8408 S  0.7  1.8   0:01.59 Xorg               
 1493 keith     20   0 74988  14m  10m S  0.0  1.4   0:00.81 nautilus           
 1557 keith     20   0 31532  12m  10m S  0.0  1.3   0:00.10 clock-applet       
 1556 keith     20   0 43768  12m 9888 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.22 indicator-apple    
 1555 keith     20   0 35660  12m 9680 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.21 wnck-applet        
 1671 keith     20   0 41516  12m 9540 S  1.0  1.2   0:00.42 gnome-terminal     
 1558 keith     20   0 43904  12m 9584 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.21 indicator-apple    
 1495 keith     20   0 43656  11m 8876 S  0.0  1.1   0:00.73 nm-applet          
 1622 keith     20   0 32236  10m 8416 S  0.0  1.1   0:00.17 notify-osd         
 1554 keith     20   0 34392  10m 8288 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.10 trashapplet        
 1494 keith     20   0 31240 9612 7544 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.08 gnome-power-man    
 1496 keith     20   0 19688 9476 7816 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.08 metacity           
 1559 keith     20   0 23108 8940 7280 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.10 notification-ar    
 1484 keith     20   0 88720 8916 6888 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.09 gnome-settings-    
 1444 keith     20   0 25880 6648 5332 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.09 gnome-session

Panels and Gnome menu

I personally don't like the top panel, and usually merge the two panels into one at the bottom. To do this, you just have to...

On the upper panel, right click at various points and select add to panel. I add the Workspace Switcher, Window List, Deleted Items, Show Desktop
Add a Main Menu and delete the Menu Bar as it takes too much real estate.
Delete the bottom menu
Right click on the top menu and change the properties to bottom, 32 pixels high, and autohide. I've altered the transparency settings since the screenshots in this page were made.

I've altered the menu layout to reflect the basic packages that this laptop has. I have put all the major applications into the top level of the Gnome menu, so that I can reach any major application with two mouse clicks.

The application menu can be edited simply by right clicking on the Gnome Menu or the Ubuntu Menu bar and selecting Edit Menus. You will see something like this (I've clicked on the Office category in the left hand list...

You can drag menu items from the right hand list and drop them onto the Applications heading in the left hand list
You can hide the categories such as Internet, Office, Graphics and so on by unticking them in the list
The result is a lean interface (designed to minimise the futzing around I do).

This lighter Gnome will have security updates for the next three years (probably beyond the life of this reconditioned laptop bought from the well known auction site for less than the cost of my TV licence) and that has plenty RAM available for use by the applications without going into battery draining swap too often.

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