Minimal Xubuntu Desktop installation

 

Edit: I strongly recommend to continue with the Xubuntu 13.10 installation because many steps described here are obsolete.

I spent a day building a minimum Xubuntu installation to avoid bloat-ware installed by default. I was installing Xubuntu on a small 16GB SSD that was used previously as an ExpressCache drive on Windows 7 and that's why I wanted to install minimum set of software for the Desktop to work.

As the basis for the system I've chosen Ubuntu 13.04 mini.iso. My first attempt was to install Debian Sid branch but software there is already outdated! And installing new software from experimental branch is not possible as apt-get would completely destroy installed Sid system.

Ubuntu with the NetworkManager as a NAT gateway

Sometimes I use my Xubuntu notebook as a NAT gateway for my Windows 7 computer because its WLAN interface works in 5GHz band and Windows computer works only in 2.4GHz. So I connect my Win7 computer to my Xubuntu notebook using a crossover Ethernet cable and turn it ito a NAT gateway using a bash script.