Re: Freeing megs

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

> From: "R.G. Mayhue" <rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com>
> 
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, JF Martinez wrote:
> >
> > I have thought inb a couple ways to reduce size:
> >
> > 1) Go to XFree 4.  Its binary seems to be far smaller than XFRee 3
> >    given its architecture who doesn't duplicate the high level part of
> >    the servers.
> >
> I have been using XFreee-4.0 for some time and it seems to work great. The
> problem is configuration. I have had no luck rewriting RH's Xconfigurator
> and
> the configuration could be somewhat difficault for the inexperienced.
> XFree-4.0

I forgot to tell than there is an XFree 4 in rawhide and a newer
XConfigurator.  But I have noticed the rawhide install still uses
XFree 3.3.6

> comes with a command line option of (from memory) "--configure" that does a
> pretty good job of it. It's a lot like xf86configure. It's actually easier
> because you
> don't need to set mode line and etc. The new servers (or modules as they are
> refered to) don't need them. The only problem is that the install broke some
> of
> installed RH6.2beta RPM's when I installed it. Mesa and one or two others. I
> have notes at home:-P
> >

I was thinking in replacing that Mesa since it breaks Blender.
However I will nedd the list of the other things who are broken.

I have also noiced that XFree 4 is much faster at most things but
there are a couple ones like moving a themed Gnome window who are
slower.



> > 2) If we use XFree 4 for the installation then we shrink size a second
> time
> >
> That was my next problem, but it could be done and would help reduce the
> size.

And dinally there is a drastic but unplasant one: remove X from the
tree who is executed at install time.  This would force the use of a
text based install and would make us look archaic but it is trivial to
implement.

> On another note: I saw a post on freshmeat.net on the 14th for a windowing
> system based on svgalib. The windowing system contains a library to port
> *newt* programs to the new system. The RH-6.0 text installer was ported and
> used in a Chinese distro called "Happy Linux." The screenshots of the
> installer
> I saw were pretty impressive. I downloaded the tar files but really didn't
> have
> time to look at them before I left for Pa.
> >
> > 3) Move installation of theme packages and Gimp doc to the postinstall
> >    phase (ie they can be in another CD)
> >
> These were the kind of packages I was referring to earlier since they can
> be installed at any time after the initial install is complete. Great idea.
> >
> > 4) See if we can use the new Netscape who is alledgedly far leaner
> >    than Netscpae 4.  Netscape 4 is so buggy that we have little to
> >    lose by using the new "unproven" Netscape.
> >
> I agree. I have been using mozilla M14 for some time now and was going
> to suggest using it but I thought it still had one too many bugs. I have not
> used
> the Mozilla based Netscape but I hear it has less bugs then NS 4. KDE 2.0
> should be comming along nicely also.
> 

Aaaargh!  I guess it will be bigger than KDE 1

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org