Minimal packages to run X Window System (TWM)

From WBITT's Cooker!

The package list here, was tested on CENTOS 5.5 x86_64 installed with @core. There are two methods to do this.

• YUM method, if you already have a working yum repository available.
• RPM method, if you do not have a yum repository.

YUM method

You can use the command yum groupinstall 'X Window System' to install simple X Window System, with TWM (Tom's Window Manager). This group is already compact enough. Thus there is no benefit in installing X Window System's components by hand.

There is already a yum repository configured in default system installation, by the name 'c5-media', which checks for media in any of the following: /media, /media/cdrom or /media/CentOS . Just mount your CentOS CD/DVD on /media/cdrom.

# mkdir /media/cdrom
# mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom/

The following will install about 115 MB of packages, and will give you a fully functional X Window System:

#  yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c5-media  groupinstall 'X Window System'

If you are still interested in installing the core packages constituting the group 'X Window System', then you would need to install the following. (Will install 89 MB of RPMs). The dependencies will automatically be pulled by yum.

#  yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c5-media install \
  bitmap-fonts dejavu-lgc-fonts desktop-backgrounds-basic \
  gdm glx-utils synaptics system-config-display vnc-server \
  xorg-x11-apps xorg-x11-drivers xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi \
  xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi \
  xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 \
  xorg-x11-fonts-misc xorg-x11-fonts-truetype \
  xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-twm xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-xfs xorg-x11-xinit xterm

You may want to install an additional web browser, such as firefox.x86_64:

#  yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c5-media install firefox.x86_64

System stats (before and after)

Our system:

[root@testkde ~]# uname -a
Linux testx 2.6.18-194.el5 #1 SMP Fri Apr 3 14:58:14 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Before: (only @core / no X)

[root@testx ~]# rpm -qa | wc -l
233

[root@testx ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda3             2.8G  717M  2.0G  27% /
/dev/vda1              99M   12M   82M  13% /boot
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm
[root@testx ~]#

After: (@core and X Window components)

[root@testx ~]# rpm -qa | wc -l
443

[root@testx ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda3             2.8G  1.2G  1.6G  43% /
/dev/vda1              99M   12M   82M  13% /boot
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm
[root@testx ~]# 

ScreenShot