[SlugLUG] Xubuntu on low-memory systems

[Peter Belew]

Installing Ubuntu on low-memory systems

I have been experimenting with installing xubuntu-desktop
on low-memory, slow systems running Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS; and
also on my Averatec laptop as an alternate desktop.

(My faster systems all run 6.06.1 LTS - Long Term Support)

I have configured it with keyboard support for English,
German, and Dutch (using the US International layout for
Dutch, instead of the standard Dutch layout).

The low-memory systems are 233-mhz and 400-mhz Pentium
systems, with 64 mb of RAM. One of them has 2 8-GB hard
disks, the other has about 100 GB of disk space. One
of these systems originally had Fedora Core 1 installed,
the other had 5.10 Ubuntu installed, from an alternate
install disk.

I have been installing Ubuntu using the alternate install
disk, rather than either the desktop disk or the server
install disk (or the xubuntu install disk). These systems
are a bit limited from running the full Gnome desktop,
and also the server kernel doesn't seem to want to run
on such small-memory systems.

The alternate install disk uses a text-only installer to
install a non-GUI system. I then install ubuntu-desktop
using

  aptitude install xubuntu-desktop

(I normally set a root password on the systems I install
on - I personally prefer that over using sudo)

I think it's best to start with 6.06.1 or later versions
of Ubuntu - then you get a better version of xubuntu-desktop
than with earlier versions.

Initially you get a system with no UTF-8 support - LANG will
be set to "C" - you should set the US locale with the

  updates>system>language support

menu. Also, make sure you have

  LANGUAGE="en"
  LANG=en_US.UTF-8

in /etc/environment.

International keyboard support on xubuntu

For keyboard support and switching, first install the Keyboard Layout
Switcher in the top panel. Do this by right clicking on the panel
selecting Add Item, and scrolling down to the applet name and clicking
on it.

Then you need to set up X to select among several keyboards.
You can do this by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but it's also
possible to put the needed configuration in a separate file
which is loaded when X starts up. This what I mostly have done.
First, I created a script called /usr/bin/fixkeyboard, which
looks like this (for my configuration):

  #!/bin/bash
  setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:shift_toggle -layout "us,de,us" \
    -variant ",,alt-intl"

This allows a double-shift (left and right shift keys depressed
together) to cycle through US, German, and US layouts. The -variant
part of the command specifies the alternate international US keyboard
for the third selection. This is like the regular US layout but has
dead keys and AltGr (right ALT) combinations for typing accented and
other international characters. (I actually invented the original
version of this layout for Olivetti and Microsoft in the late
1980's, with some improvements later on from an engineer who
worked at Ericsson and Nokia). This file should be set to be
executable. To make it work, it must be added to the startup files
for the desktop. This is done by selecting the menu

  Applications>Settings>Autostarted Applications

and entering the command /user/bin/fixkeyboard (along with desired
comments) in the dialog that pops up.

The next time you log in, keyboard switching should work.

Alternatively, edit the keyboard section /etc/X11/xorg.conf as follows:

  Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "kbd"
        Option          "CoreKeyboard"
        Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc104"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "us,de,us"
        Option          "XkbVariant"    ",,alt-intl"
        Option          "XkbOptions"    "grp:shift_toggle"
  EndSection

The order of the last 3 options is probably important. You should reboot
to make this work properly. Note that if you take this approach, the
keyboard layouts apply to all users of the system.

Currently the keyboard switcher applet doesn't show the difference between
alternate layouts, only the difference between different countries.

See http://ftp.x.org/pub/X11R6.9.0/doc/PDF/XKB-Config.pdf

- Peter