5 ms·
But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.
by weare138 6y ago
But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.
- userbinator 6y agoWin3.x would be fine with 4MB of RAM, and it's (just barely) enough for Win95 too. But those OSs were definitely optimised for low resource consumption far more heavily than Linux.
- Narishma 6y agoWindows 3.x ran OK with 1MB of RAM if you only used a couple of applications at the same time. It wasn't the fastest thing and swapped a lot but it was usable for Word, Excel and the like, as long as you stuck to contemporary versions, as later ones tended to be more memory-hungry.
- icedchai 6y agoLinux wasn’t always this bloated. My first Linux system had 3 megs of RAM. This was back in 1993. A 386SX laptop with 1 meg on the motherboard plus a 2 meg expansion. I could barely run X.
- ksaj 6y agoI would argue that it isn't Linux that is bloated. Linux is the kernel. It is the desktop environments and the things added to them to make each distro distinct (and fat). There are significantly less bloated desktop environments, but people like their bling, and bling by default includes an accompanying increase in resource consumption. Look at Raspbian. It looks pretty good, but uses a lot less resources than gnome and kde. You can add to it if you want it to be as bloated as the typical desktop environments. But it's a choice. Personally I'm in love with tiling desktops which use even less resources yet. And they're blazingly fast.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago...I wonder how difficult it would be for whatever desktop environments GP was using in 1993 to be used today, on a super-resource-constrained system like an N64. The Linux adage is "don't break userspace", right?
- ksaj 6y agoYou can already do that by choosing desktop environments that aren't trying to be all things for all people. More bling is literally more resources. A lot of it is merely feature creep. Remember when OSX used to have animations (like applications minimizing like a genie getting sucked back into its kettle) as a feature you could turn on if you wanted it? Now it's pretty much default, and most people don't know you can shut that stuff off. And that's how things get sluggish. Sexy new "advanced" features become default, and you always need faster computers and more memory to keep up. If you insist on using Gnome or KDE, obviously bloated because everything has extra features enabled by default, then then shut those resource hogs off. You'll start to get back to fast desktop days again. Some people will miss the bling, but you can't have one without the other. You can't expect all that sweet sweet bling without the resources being tied up to make it happen.
- ksaj 6y agoI got voted down by someone who obviously never compiled their own kernel (which used to be the norm). After lots of questions about how you need to config, you get your kernel... THAT is Linux -- the kernel. The rest, the part you are complaining about bloating is the GNU part. I'm not complaining about that GNU part, btw. I've lived in it since the early 90's. But the Linux kernel can be as slim and responsive as you want it to be if you are willing to compile yourself. You can even compile it as an RTOS, and you can never convince me that would be too sluggish. What I got voted down for was pointing out that Linux-proper wasn't the slow part of that blend. It was the desktop. And that part is GNU, not Linux. Period.
- icedchai 6y agoIt was very barebones. FVWM was the window manager I used, running on SLS Linux with a 0.99.xx kernel.
- monocasa 6y agoThe expansion pak is another 4MB of RAM, so that'd bring you to 8 total. And Windows 95 only required 4MB, so it should be within the realm of possibility,
- Latty 6y agoUpgradeable to 8mb with the "Expansion Pack", for what that is worth.
- laoganmaplz 6y agoFascinatingly, quite the opposite! For example, the original Macintosh had only a small fraction of that to work with, at 128 Kilobytes![1] Certainly a modern GUI a la KDE, Gnome and friends would be well outside of its abilities, but a functional GUI is possible on a shockingly small amount of memory! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
- im3w1l 6y agoI don't see why a modern gui should be impossible. It's not like flat design with rounded corners is amazingly complicated. One issue could be high-res assets, but with some codegolfed vector graphics I think you could get something nice looking.
- genpfault 6y ago> codegolfed vector graphics IIRC the Haiku folks had a format for that[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format
- bluedino 6y agoIt was IRIX, not Linux, but UNIX GUI’s were memory hungry (more than their windows counterparts). The SGI Indy which could be had with an R4000 CPU came with 16MB base
- anthk 6y agoAnd? People ran FVWM and rxvt on 4MB of RAM for i386. Slow, but with 8MB it was usable, and with 16MB FVWM ran much faster than CDE itself, not to mention rxvt vs dtterm or even xterm.
- derjames 6y agoYes, and also GEOS running in a Commodore 64
- 6y ago
- arghwhat 6y agoThat's more than plenty. (It won't be running Gtk4 or Qt6 of course.)
- weare138 6y agoCheck out this article on the project: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nintendo-64-Linux-2020-Port https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nintendo... >It's also noted that Linux on the Nintendo 64 is still a big buggy and "constantly flirting with [out of memory]." If you're running out of ram with just a shell that definitely doesn't leave much left. And there's no storage device, so you can't swap.
- arghwhat 6y agoThe DSLinux project runs in 4MB with no MMU as well. They do recommend using the +4MB RAM expansions cards to use the graphical environment, but it's not a a requirement. IIRC, there used to be a GBALinux as well. That's what, 1/8th of the memory? That this port is OOM-ing is just it being buggy.
- yellowapple 6y ago> And there's no storage device, so you can't swap. There's the cartridge. And yes, while technically that's supposed to be ROM, flashcarts like the EverDrive are able to get creative with that, and I can see that being a viable pathway to achieving something approximately resembling swapping.
- sedatk 6y agoIIRC, X11 ran fine on my 486DX2-66 with 4MB RAM with Linux 1.2.13.
- derjames 6y agoLook around for GEOS from Berkeley Systems. It was a graphical OS for the Commodore 64/128. I was using this thing in 1986.
- ksaj 6y agoI remember GEOS, but when I got my Commodore 128, it was only a couple of months before I discovered the "bigger computers." I didn't have my 128 for very long at all, but I had a Vic 20 and C64 before that. I thought the 128 was way better than my C64, but way too late. I wasn't much into video games, so that didn't last long. Chronology thing, I guess. Berkeley Systems, of course, is known for BSD.
- tomc1985 6y agoThe machine can render 3d worlds but a simple GUI is too much?
- voltagex_ 6y agoa large operating system kernel + GUI is too much. You're not loading NintenDOS with Mario 64.
- mrmonkeyman 6y agoIt's not rendering "3D worlds". It's transforming a handful of triangles and mapping them to 2D. (Good) font rendering alone would be above it's capabilities.
- dreamlayers 6y agoI can run X in 4 MB on a VAXstation 2000 in Ultrix or Athena-4.3BSD. But a usable Linux 5.10 system in 4 or even 8 MB? That's what I find hard to believe.
- m-p-3 6y ago8MB with the Expansion Pak I think.
- anthk 6y agoYou could run X with 4MB, but it would crawl. With 8mb it was ok-ish with swap, and it was snappy with 16. No KDE, no Gnome, no XFCE, but FVWM flied.