Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Ubuntu Howto

Jerry Jankura wrote:

>Hi, Folks:
>
>And, finally - is anyone running Ubuntu + EMC2 on a 450Mhz machine with
>only 256 Mbytes of memory? If so, could you share your opinions of its
>usefulness. I tried to load Ubuntu into a machine with only 192 Mbytes
>of memory and got so much thrashing back and forth that I gave up. I've
>since expanded that machine to 256 Mbytes, which is as much as it'll
>take and am curious if I'd have better results if I again attempted to
>install Ubuntu on it.
>
>

You should be able to run just fine with 256M. If the default GUI
(gnome) seems slow to you, you might want to try xubuntu instead
<http://www.xubuntu.org/>. This is a distribution that uses the
lightweight xfce environment instead of gnome. Make sure you get the
6.06 LTS version of xubuntu, since that's the only one that the packages
are maintained for. (LTS stands for "Long Term Support" - there will be
support for this version for 5 years from release, or until June 2011)

There is no EMC2 liveCD using xubuntu, but it's easy to install using
these instructions:
<http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Installing_EMC2#On_Ubuntu_5_10_or_6_06_using_precompiled_EMC2_packages>

I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but I'll bet it's possible to install
the xubuntu packages onto the stock ubuntu install, which should give
you the choice of which UI you want to boot into.

- Steve