Walltop

WallTop computers... recycle an old laptop by removing all the extraneous parts such as the cdrom drive, floppy drive, (dead) battery and then hanging it on the wall.

I am building one from an old Dell Inspiron 3700.

Operating system

I looked at using Debian, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux (which immediately panics on boot), and Movix. I decided I might as well stick with Ubuntu so I am building a custom Live CD. I will then transfer it to a Compact Flash card, which will be plugged into an adapter and replace the incredibly noisy stock 4200 rpm hard drive.

See http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-customize-your-ubuntu-live-cd-p1

Packages to remove from the stock image.

apt-get remove --purge gnome-games
# all language packs
apt-get remove --purge `dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package}\n' | grep language-pack
apt-get remove --purge `dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package}\n' | grep openoffice`
# EVERYTHING Gnome related - don't want a desktop
apt-get remove --purge `dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package}\n' | grep gnome`
# Support for burning cd's and dvd's
apt-get remove --purge cdparanoia cdrdao 

dvd+rw-tools

# Sundry apps I don't want
apt-get remove --purge f-spot firefox ftp ghostscript gimp ispell cupsys 
# Build tools -- won't be doing any builds on this machine!
apt-get remove --purge gcc make nano
# Windows friendly things
apt-get remove --purge  ntfs=3g ntfsprogs 
# System utilities that don't make sense on read-only media
apt-get remove --purge logrotate
# Documentation
apt-get remove diveintopython docbook-xml