How minimal is too minimal?

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My honest 2 cents after ~48 hours with minimal install, haven’t done “default” yet, keep that in mind.

The good:

  • Obviously footprint/boottime
  • Many things are open for personal defaults without much work other then apt-get install [pack]
  • Fair amount of in-terminal apps included for getting started

The friendly feedback:

  • It has a included browser, but the welcome screen has a literal option to pick a browser. Even for non-terminal minded people this would ship fine without one installed. It somewhat defeats the purpose of a light install when a Firefox user has to uninstall another browser.
  • Some more default (maybe even without GUI) Gnome programs would be nice, especially if 150-250mb can be freed from a browser. Things like gnome-screenshot which in a way make “the keyboard complete” are things to reconsider perhaps. It’s not the same, but feels related to “having to fix the num-lock function” for the end-user in my case.

I hope it does resonate clearly that I’m quite pleased with the experience so far :slight_smile:

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Good feedback. Did you have a look at the blog post? I’m curious how you find the experience after layering up. Although, I believe you went full install if I remember some of your other posts.

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Yeah did the aptitude full install thing because for this week, workflow > experiments. Will likely change in a few days, then it’s verbose time :slight_smile:

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Hi,
Loved the feature that allows to choose a “Minimal Install”.
Usually, after I install Ubuntu, I spend some time uninstalling unnecessary stuff.
So I took that option… and that was a pretty bad move for me :frowning:
Why ?
Because I assume that this omits to install a package that is necessary for the “online accounts” to be created from the “Settings” panel.
And if you can’t create a Google account, then you can’t use Evolution because of a stupid “OAtuh2 Secret missing”…

So as a suggestion : keep the striped down install, but reload the missing package that allows “online accounts” to work.

Of course, I may have overlooked an option and I ain’t no advanced user. So please, if what I write is stupid, please don’t flame me :slight_smile:

Regards.

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At a guess you will need the gnome-online-accounts package

sudo apt install gnome-online-accounts
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Hi,

My, that was quick :slight_smile:
Nice to know that… Even though, having no time to dig it out, I decided to go for the full install.
Wouldn’t it be logical to add it to the minimal install as a default ? That may avoid some trouble later on :slight_smile:

If I may : I was really looking to use the Budgie desktop. Which left me with 3 options :

  • Solus PC : but given my needs and skills, not really possible ;
  • Manjaro ;
  • Ubuntu.

So I installed Manjaro. It’s nice… but after 3 days, I was still at tweaking the system, opening ports, fighting against printers that would not print, tweaking the gnome-shell to have desktop icons…
I decided to install Ubuntu Budgie on a separate drive so I can dual boot the computer. After 20 minutes, Ubuntu Budgie was installed. I then installed the stuff I need. With synaptic and the “Software” GUI, it took about 30/40 minutes. I then downloaded all my stuff from the cloud. About 30 minutes more. Then I ninally tweaked the sytem to have it looking like I wanted it too and behaving as I wante dit too. That took about 40 minutes… because I bumped on a keyboard shortcuts bug.

Conclusion : after 2hours and 30 minutes, Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie was running… and it runs fine since I installed it :slight_smile: Will probably reinstall (or clone) to the main hard drive which is for now populated with Manjaro Budgie.

Regards.

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