this is the package manager:
http://hg.slitaz.org/tazpkg/raw-file/tip/doc/tazpkg.en.html
if your thin client can boot from usb (or from a floppy which boots a usbkey) maybe you could use a live-usb system which run entirely in ram, or you could use another pc to make yourself a livecd as you want which runs entirely in ram.
you could as well boot the compressed rootfs in your flash disk and run the system in ram, in your pc this would make sense

Yes, it can boot from USB keys. This is also how I installed the system to the flash disk.

For now I'd rather not mess with ramdisks and/or live systems if possible... I'd currently prefer stripping down the already installed system on the flash disk.
Loading the whole rootfs from the flash disk into RAM sounds like a good idea to improve performance though... maybe I'll try that once I have customized the system on the flash disk as required and fully up and running, but that can wait.

You mentioned the package manager... so I could uninstall unneeded software with that? Any recommendations what I could remove from my installed default system in order to gain the space I need for Opera and its dependencies?

use "tazpkg list" and decide yourself which packages you need, i can't decide for you :-)
probably you will not want to have midori browser if you plan to install opera, osmo organizer could get removed too.
you better disable browser cache if you have only 8 Mb left.
i think that best solution for you is to boot the compressed rootfs in you cfdisk, keep /home uncompressed on cfdisk and save your changes with tazusb.

you may also check /var/cache/tazpkg , you will find backup of installation files of your packages, you can safely delete them.

Well deciding for myself what I need is a bit hard if you're not familiar with SliTaz yet... i. e. what are big packages that require lots of space in the default install, but are not required in my use case? :-)
You named the package backups, Midori and Osmo already, thanks for those hints so far... Anything else that takes up several MB which I could free up, if all I want to do is simply browse the web with Opera and modify WLAN or sound settings once in a while?

I would suggest: use justx flavor (15MB: http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/3.0/flavors/) and then install opera (midori is smaller), wireless_tools and linux_wireless.

Alternately, you can also refer the complete core flavor packages.list at : http://hg.slitaz.org/flavors/file/f236ac40420f/core/packages.list

Hmmm that sounds like a very good idea jozee! Didn't know about the justx flavor before.

Unfortunately I discovered today that this old ThinClient's ethernet connector is broken, so I can't establish a working internet connection via eth0 during install.
Can I put the packages required for wireless_tools and linux_wireless on a seperate USB key and install them from there or something like that to work around this problem?
If so, where do I get them and what is the command for installation?

Thanks in advance again!


EDIT: Nevermind, found this: http://forum.slitaz.org/index.php/discussion/724/installing-extensions-offline
Guess that answered my last question, I will try that.

Hi Matt,

You have to be the "root" user to use the tazpkg command to install or remove programs. I always use the command-line version of tazpkg.

To find programs that you want, if you know the name, do this (the # is your "root user" prompt, don't type that):

# tazpkg search [filename]

When you decide what to remove, use the tazpkg remove command, like this for example:

# tazpkg remove osmo
# tazpkg remove midori

Just using those two commands (to delete specificially those two programs) will free up quite a bit of space for you.

I too have installed Opera as my default browser in most of my SliTaz installs, but heed ernia's advice for a small one like this: disable the history and session caches from the Opera menu, or Opera will quickly fill up your drive.

My smallest SliTaz is a regular hd-install into a 125 mb partition. I did not put Opera on that one, instead i use Links as my default browser. Links requires 2.8 mb of space and can be used in either text or graphics modes. Midori is much smaller, and much more modern ... but it also has more bugs. (The Opera binary is located in /usr/lib/opera ... the latest version is 12.2 mb, and that is for the binary alone, without the extra stuff.)

What ernia was saying about /var/cache/tazpkg is that those are backups of the _packages_ themselves, that is, exactly the files that you download from the internet. After you have installed a package that is cached there, you can safely delete the .tazpkg file. On a small install like this, you should delete every single file in that directory.

If you use the slitaz webpages to search for programs and download a particular .tazpkg package from a webpage, you install it by going to the directory where you saved it and using this command, for example to install Links:

# tazpkg install links*

Then you delete the links*.tazpkg file.

Here is a list of the biggest programs i have installed on my 125 mb system. If you run these commands and see anything bigger, you probably don't need it and can use the tazpkg remove command to get rid of it:

# ls /usr/sbin -laSrh | tail
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        44.1k Sep 22  2009 pppoe-server
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        50.0k Jan 28 20:12 ntfsresize
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        74.8k Sep 21  2009 parted
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        78.1k Jan 28 20:12 mkntfs
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        78.6k Sep 21  2009 alsactl
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       141.5k Jan 28 20:07 grub
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       153.8k Feb 12 10:02 dropbear
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       338.1k Feb  4 16:02 hald
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root       392.8k Sep 21  2009 pppd
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       815.0k Jan  8 05:06 gpartedbin
#
# ls /usr/bin -laSrh | tail
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       406.5k Oct 27 10:14 mhwaveedit
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       507.0k Jan 28 12:55 genisoimage
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       517.1k Oct 27 10:13 lostirc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       563.6k Oct 27 10:15 mtpaint
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       663.4k Nov  8 15:08 osmo
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       887.9k Jan 28 20:12 notecase
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         1.0M Sep 21  2009 perl5.10.0
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         1.5M Jan 28 12:57 geany
-rws--x--x    1 root     root         1.8M Sep 24  2009 Xvesa
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         2.8M Sep 21  2009 links

This is an older version of SliTaz, so you won't have geany and some of the other programs. But run those "ls -laSrh" commands to see what you have and how big the programs are. If you really seriously only intend to use this system to browse the web, you can remove a _lot_ of stuff.

Hope that helps.

-monz

Thanks for your reply monz, that actually helps a lot! Unfortunately I'm currently unable to get my RT73 USB WLAN stick up and running, so I have to fix this in the first place before caring about the browser... will maybe start another discussion for this issue.

Update: Solved the problem with my RT73 USB W-LAN stick... all I had to do was download rt73.bin, the file with the stick's firmware, and put it in /lib/firmware! Then I set the stick up via "Wireless network connections" (dear developers, great little tool you programmed there, gets the job done easily and quickly!) and here I am, writing this from my SliTaz install - and, currently still, Midori. Which crashed three times before I could post this, by the way. Time to find some space to get rid of it asap! :P

@mat619

You could delete some man pages if any are available.

/usr/share/man

BTW: Midori crashes way to often.


Rupp

News on my deletion mayhem:
I freed up as much space as possible by uninstalling lots of packages and emptying the tazpkg cache, but ended up with only 15 MB free space. Not exactly the big gain I was hoping for - Opera doesn't even install because its package file in /tmp already fills up the flash disk nicely.

So... how now brown cow? Currently I'm thinking about ways to expand the 128 MB flash space. The justx flavor is of course still an option to squeeze the whole system and Opera onto the 128 MB, but for now I'll try to improve my current installation before starting all over again.
What do you think, could I possibly move some "not too performance critical but big" folders of the existing filesystem to a ext2/3 partition on a big usb key and change the fstab accordingly? Or lets rather ask first, are there any folders which would make sense to be moved to gain some space?


( Installing the system completely onto a USB key is not an option by the way, since my ThinClient isn't particulary happy about booting from USB devices... feels like bytes being moved by snails up a 90° slope. )

For Midori, please try changing Preferences->Preferred Encoding to Unicode(Utf-8). Midori seems to be working fine after that .