Lightweight Ubuntu: LXDE Desktop from Scratch

The overall Linux performance depends on the amount of system resources your desktop environment is using. Lightweight desktop environments such as LXDE consume less resources, and are ideal for older computers that can’t keep up with heavier Linux desktop environments.

This article describes how to build an Ubuntu-based LXDE system piece by piece. It is a longer process but the resulting system is as small and light as it possibly gets. I start by installing a regular Ubuntu 14.10 server system and add desktop functionality on top of it in small steps.

Server Install

The installation of Ubuntu Server is actually very straight forward. You first need to download the ISO image from the Ubuntu Website and burn it to a CD. You can also copy the ISO image to a USB flash drive.

Boot the computer from CD or USB stick and go trough the install menus one by one.

Ubuntu Server 14.10 install

Installing net-snmp MIBs on Ubuntu and Debian

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks. net-snmp is the main SNMP implementation for Linux and BSD platforms. On Ubuntu or Debian net-snmp tools are installed as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install snmp

You can also install snmpd package. This package contains the SNMP agent.

Installing MIBs

For licensing reasons, net-snmp package installs only a small number of MIBs in /usr/share/mibs directory. A large number of standard MIBs can be installed using snmp-mibs-downloader package:

$ sudo apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader
$ sudo download-mibs

To have the new MIBs recognized by net-snmp, edit /etc/snmp/snmp.conf file as follows:

$ cat /etc/snmp/snmp.conf
mibs +ALL
$

Ubuntu Desktop Memory Comparison

Ubuntu 13.04 comes in a number of different variants, covering a wide range of hardware platforms. I am particularly interested in these variants because my computer is a 6 years old dual-core AMD 64bit with 1GB of memory.

As the Internet stopped getting faster, two years ago I’ve decided not to buy another computer. I don’t “read” flash heavy sites, I guess nobody likes them anyway. For games, movies, and music what I have is more than enough. I do need to keep an eye on memory however. Lately, some developers started to throw into their software everything but the kitchen sink.

SNMP MIB Browser on Ubuntu Workstation

Updated on June 2, 2013

Ubuntu Linux is arguably the most popular Linux distribution today. Well designed and easy-to-use as a desktop, it is also an excellent choice for any kind of server infrastructure in datacenters. In fact, according to W3Tech, Ubuntu server is right now in the second position and growing fast as a webserver.

In a previous article I looked at installing a basic network router using RCP100 on a Ubuntu 12.04 computer. Today, I will take a look at using Ubuntu for some more serious SNMP work.

RCP100 Basic Router Configuration on Ubuntu 12.04

I do like the idea of an open-source software router, and I’ve tried several of them so far. Most open-source routers would concentrate on implementing the main IP routing protocols one by one. Administration features like CLI or SNMP seem to get less attention. There is little or no support for integrated Access Control Lists, NTP, DHCP or DNS functionality. This is in sharp contrast with the commercial routers where administration and network management are first class citizens.

RCP100 seems to break the tradition. It has a Cisco-like command line interface (CLI), and all the regular administration and management protocols. Starting with version 0.99 it also features a simple and intuitive web interface, making the router accessible to less sophisticated users and beginner administrators.

In this article I will set up a basic RCP100 IP router on a Ubuntu 12.04 computer using the web interface. This means there will be lots of pictures and no CLI commands. Networking experts will definitely get bored.

Ubuntu Cleanup

I’ve recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS). The main advantage of a LTS distribution is that once you clean it up, it stays like that for two years.

Unity

First step is to switch your desktop to LXDE, unless you like Unity or Gnome the Third. The recommended way is to install Lubuntu, in my case I will install LXDE on top of regular Unity. If you already have regular Ubuntu installed, it would be too much trouble to start downloading and installing everything. Also keep in mind that Lubuntu is not a LTS release, and the applications installed are different, for example Goolge Chromium instead of Mozilla Firefox, or Gnumeric instead of LibreOffice Calc. LXDE is such a small desktop component, it might be a better idea to chose your distro based on the applications it provides and switch the default desktop environment to LXDE.

$ sudo apt-get install lxde