4 ms·

Well, other operating systems are still relatively decent at this. My main Linux install eats ~250 MiB of RAM after startup, and I've spent exactly zero amount

Well, other operating systems are still relatively decent at this. My main Linux install eats ~250 MiB of RAM after startup, and I've spent exactly zero amount of time on that, so it can be trimmed down further. That's on a system with 32 GiB of RAM — if you have less RAM, it will eat even less since page tables and various kernel buffers will be smaller. FreeBSD can be comfortably used on systems with 64 MiB of RAM for solving simple tasks like a small proxy server. It has always been good at this — back in the day cheap VPS often used it (and not Linux) precisely because of its small memory requirements.

deleted 4y ago
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anthk 4y ago
OpenWRT Linux with Musl ran fine under 48MB of RAM, 7-8MB running. Modern GNU/Linux, I mean.
- avx56 4y ago
  No GUI though right?
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Today's version of icewm takes around 16mb of memory, xorg will add a bit to it. There are smaller window managers but I choose this one as an example as it gives a similar experience to the windows xp of olds. I have done the experience on slimming as much as possible a desktop. But once you start a web browser with more than 3 tabs memory usage goes through the roof. In the end if you want to run an old system with 512mb of ram you are kind of forced to use the web sans javascript and images. You are almost better off using links or w3m and tui apps for everything. Netsurf can work too if you are limiting the number of tabs open. One a 1GB system you can definitely use a modern web browser but you definitely need the ad/trackers removal extensions and have to take good care of not opening more than 2-3 tabs or you will start swapping a lot.
    - anthk 4y ago
      1GB user there. 4-5 tabs it's fine under Luakit, ZRAM (1GB virtual + 1GB physical = 2GB) and a hosts blocking file.
vitorgrs 4y ago
Which distro? Last Linux distros I tried wasn't exactly lightweight RAM wise.

deleted 4y ago

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anthk 4y ago

OpenWRT Linux with Musl ran fine under 48MB of RAM, 7-8MB running. Modern GNU/Linux, I mean.

avx56 4y ago
No GUI though right?
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Today's version of icewm takes around 16mb of memory, xorg will add a bit to it. There are smaller window managers but I choose this one as an example as it gives a similar experience to the windows xp of olds. I have done the experience on slimming as much as possible a desktop. But once you start a web browser with more than 3 tabs memory usage goes through the roof. In the end if you want to run an old system with 512mb of ram you are kind of forced to use the web sans javascript and images. You are almost better off using links or w3m and tui apps for everything. Netsurf can work too if you are limiting the number of tabs open. One a 1GB system you can definitely use a modern web browser but you definitely need the ad/trackers removal extensions and have to take good care of not opening more than 2-3 tabs or you will start swapping a lot.
  - anthk 4y ago
    1GB user there. 4-5 tabs it's fine under Luakit, ZRAM (1GB virtual + 1GB physical = 2GB) and a hosts blocking file.

vitorgrs 4y ago

Which distro? Last Linux distros I tried wasn't exactly lightweight RAM wise.