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I use Fedora Linux on my laptop. What does this mean for the Fedora Project? Any thoughts on an alternate OS with a lesser memory footprint than Fedora? It take

I use Fedora Linux on my laptop. What does this mean for the Fedora Project? Any thoughts on an alternate OS with a lesser memory footprint than Fedora? It takes about 1 GB to boot up Fedora 27 now. And what's the future for CentOS?

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Not sure it is time to run yet, but I enjoy using Ubuntu Mate. Xubuntu is a low mem choice as well.
tomsmeding 8y ago
As for alternate Linux distributions, I don't know how similar you want to stay to Fedora, but my current setup would surely conform to your stated requirements: Arch linux, with i3 as window manager. I use st as my terminal emulator. All together, the memory footprint is minimal, and it makes my not-all-that-low laptop specs shine far more than a heavier distribution would have. If you want something similar to Fedora, dunno. I believe the desktop interface is a big part of the memory usage of most distributions, so unless I'm mistaken in that, wanting low memory usage as well as a nice interface is going to be difficult.
- megous 8y ago
  I also use this, and memory footprint is ~100MiB, mostly on the Xorg side. i3 itself + various other components is ~20MiB total.
  - bpye 8y ago
    Have you tried sway instead of i3? Any reason you've stuck to i3 with X11 instead or just no reason to change?
    - megous 8y ago
      No reason to change. Though I might try it on one of my Orange Pi's one day. Does sway support OpenGL ES 2.0? EDIT: Actually I probably use a few things that would need to be modified to work, like screencast recording via some custom gst-launch command, that depend on X in a non-trivial way.
abrowne 8y ago
> Any thoughts on an alternate OS Ubuntu, Debian, Arch? (Or Endless if you want something OSTree/Flatpak-based like Fedora Silverblue.) > with a lesser memory footprint than Fedora? Anything not GNOME? Not being (too) snarky — GNOME uses a lot of memory, although I've read they're making some progress recently. Even KDE these days is pretty low in memory usage by default.
nilsocket 8y ago
KDE's memory footprint on boot decreased to 400MB or less.
gregknicholson 8y ago
Yeah, Silverblue is just starting to be really nice. :/
rodgerd 8y ago
If you think IBM are going to keep Red Hat's commitments to Fedora or CentOS going you are in for a rude surprise.
iaml 8y ago
NixOS maybe? Don't know about memory footprint, but as a fellow fedora laptop user, I find this distro the most appealing to switch to (arch being the other option, but too high maintenance for my taste).
- bpye 8y ago
  NixOS is interesting but certainly not the easiest migration, it's a very different way of administering your system. That said, this might be what I chose to do now.
  - randie63 8y ago
    https://getsol.us/download/ https://getsol.us/download/ Long time arch user. Now using Solus for the last 9 months and I love it.
donedealomg 8y ago
Just go Debian and be done with all this stuff
outbackcoder 8y ago
Why not consider Open or NetBSD? They can make nice desktops, and OpenBSD is very friendly on laptops. And they are lighter than Fedora and perform much better. And, they use a maximally free license, but this is simply my preference. You may feel different.
- wilsonnb3 8y ago
  I wouldn’t say that OpenBSD is friendly on laptops, especially on laptops made in the past five years or so.
  - bpye 8y ago
    I've always been told that ThinkPad should work, even relatively modern ones. Is that not true?

mixmastamyk 8y ago

Not sure it is time to run yet, but I enjoy using Ubuntu Mate. Xubuntu is a low mem choice as well.

tomsmeding 8y ago

As for alternate Linux distributions, I don't know how similar you want to stay to Fedora, but my current setup would surely conform to your stated requirements: Arch linux, with i3 as window manager. I use st as my terminal emulator. All together, the memory footprint is minimal, and it makes my not-all-that-low laptop specs shine far more than a heavier distribution would have. If you want something similar to Fedora, dunno. I believe the desktop interface is a big part of the memory usage of most distributions, so unless I'm mistaken in that, wanting low memory usage as well as a nice interface is going to be difficult.

megous 8y ago
I also use this, and memory footprint is ~100MiB, mostly on the Xorg side. i3 itself + various other components is ~20MiB total.
- bpye 8y ago
  Have you tried sway instead of i3? Any reason you've stuck to i3 with X11 instead or just no reason to change?
  - megous 8y ago
    No reason to change. Though I might try it on one of my Orange Pi's one day. Does sway support OpenGL ES 2.0? EDIT: Actually I probably use a few things that would need to be modified to work, like screencast recording via some custom gst-launch command, that depend on X in a non-trivial way.

abrowne 8y ago

> Any thoughts on an alternate OS Ubuntu, Debian, Arch? (Or Endless if you want something OSTree/Flatpak-based like Fedora Silverblue.) > with a lesser memory footprint than Fedora? Anything not GNOME? Not being (too) snarky — GNOME uses a lot of memory, although I've read they're making some progress recently. Even KDE these days is pretty low in memory usage by default.

nilsocket 8y ago

KDE's memory footprint on boot decreased to 400MB or less.

gregknicholson 8y ago

Yeah, Silverblue is just starting to be really nice. :/

rodgerd 8y ago

If you think IBM are going to keep Red Hat's commitments to Fedora or CentOS going you are in for a rude surprise.

iaml 8y ago

NixOS maybe? Don't know about memory footprint, but as a fellow fedora laptop user, I find this distro the most appealing to switch to (arch being the other option, but too high maintenance for my taste).

bpye 8y ago
NixOS is interesting but certainly not the easiest migration, it's a very different way of administering your system. That said, this might be what I chose to do now.
- randie63 8y ago
  https://getsol.us/download/ https://getsol.us/download/ Long time arch user. Now using Solus for the last 9 months and I love it.

donedealomg 8y ago

Just go Debian and be done with all this stuff

outbackcoder 8y ago

Why not consider Open or NetBSD? They can make nice desktops, and OpenBSD is very friendly on laptops. And they are lighter than Fedora and perform much better. And, they use a maximally free license, but this is simply my preference. You may feel different.

wilsonnb3 8y ago
I wouldn’t say that OpenBSD is friendly on laptops, especially on laptops made in the past five years or so.
- bpye 8y ago
  I've always been told that ThinkPad should work, even relatively modern ones. Is that not true?