Installing Minimal Ubuntu
If you are like me, then you enjoy using the Ubuntu linux distro, whose latest release at the time of writing is 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). I’ve always been somewhat annoyed by all the applications that get pre-installed, as I never use them, but rather install the ones that I prefer. Because of this, I went in search of a “bare-bones” solution for Ubuntu. Basically, I wanted the Ubuntu Desktop, but none of the applications out of the box. That way I can install only the ones that I’m going to use. Luckily, there is a Minimal CD Image for the latest Ubuntu release, which will let me do just what I want.

To get started get the minimal image here. Then burn the image to CD (USB method didn’t work for me). Make sure you are connected to the internet via a cable as this install will need to get some additional basic packages from the Ubuntu repository.

Go ahead and boot your machine from the installation CD. You should be prompted with a boot screen. At this point you can enter additional boot flags or just simply press the “Enter” key and the installation will begin.

Follow the prompts. They should all be self explanatory. You’ll be doing things like specifying your location, detecting your keyboard, and naming your machine.

On the partitioning screen I chose “Guided – use entire disk”, but you may want to do something different here, depending on your preferences.

Then the actual package installation progress will begin. Once it finishes you’ll be prompted to select a username and password. You can also choose to encrypt your home directory. I did. You’ll be asked about update preference. It’s safe to choose automatic updates.

Next, you’ll be presented with some package choices to install since we only have installed the very “bare-bones” of Ubuntu. You certainly can select something here, but the idea is to do a very minimal install. So, I suggest choosing manual package installation (at the bottom of the list).

After GRUB installs itself, the installation will finish up (this will take a while). Once everything is installed, remove the installation CD and hit “Continue”. The system will reboot and you’ll be greeted with a shell login prompt. Congratulations, you have just installed a bare minimum Ubuntu Lucid Lynx system.


Customizing your brand new minimal install
You can now login into your new system with the user you setup during the install. You are free to install as little or as much as you want now and you can configure your system just the way you like it. Here is a post on Ubuntu forums about installing the bare essentials of Ubuntu Desktop. You can refer to that if you want the Gnome Desktop without the additional applications.

This will get you the basic gnome environment with networking:

sudo apt-get install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome indicator-applet-session notify-osd

After this you can reboot and you’ll see a graphical Gnome login. You can login as your user and see a very basic Gnome Desktop. It’s very plain at this point, but that is what I wanted. Since trusty old terminal is present with this minimal install, you can fire it up and get to installing your favorite theme, icons, applications and whatnot. I will install the default Lucid theme with icons and some favorite apps of mine.

sudo apt-get install light-themes chromium-browser gnome-do

Have fun configuring your system and I’m always happy to receive comments about my posts, so feel free to write something.