[conspire] More relevant to the origins of this list.

[Alex Kleider]

On 2020-04-25 03:24, Michael Paoli wrote:
> At RAM of 256MiB & 512MiB, those are way too lowely for current or
> supported Ubuntu, though perhaps (barely) some other *buntu variants
> might (barely) work.
> 
> However, what would be highly feasible, go with current Debian - either
> stable ... or if you're up for (much) more frequent updates and
> leading/bleeding edge, possibly even testing or unstable.
> Just do a base install - that'll be pretty light on memory ... quite
> light.  I know I currently have installs of those at 512 MiB RAM.
> Might work okay(ish) with 256 MiB RAM ... hmmm, ... let's see
> (edit virtual machine configuration ... 512 MiB --> 256 MiB)
> oh heck, don't even need to bother to try that:
>   <memory unit='KiB'>131072</memory>
> ... been running that just fine ... but that's without any X at all.
> (and not sure why it says KiB when it shows size in bytes ... perhaps
> KiB is the smallest granularity by which it can be adjusted).
> 
> Anyway, if you start with just bare base install (deselect all optional
> software when installing), you'll get a very tight small minimal 
> installation.
> Then one can judiciously add ... X, some low-memory Window Manager (and 
> not
> any full Desktop Environment), add languages (Python, ...), etc.

In case anyone wants to know: python (both 2.7 and 3.7) come with the 
basic Debian install.


> Should be able to get quite functional systems up without all that much
> RAM needed.  Also, with low RAM, adding more than ample swap will
> help.  Sure, may be a performance hit - but that's generally preferable
> to running out of RAM.  For such low mem systems, I'd probably 
> recommend
> going 4x RAM on the swap size.
> 
> Ah, ... I thought that teeny weeny one I'd been playin' around with
> was stable ... it's still oldstable.  Anyway, stable might push the
> usage up slightly ... but not all that much.  Anyway, a peek at it,
> after I've fired it up:
> # cat /etc/debian_version; free; df -h
> 9.9
>               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache    
> available
> Mem:         117124       48668        4240         856       64216     
>    62428
> Swap:       1046524        1320     1045204
> Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> udev             47M     0   47M   0% /dev
> tmpfs            32M  1.5M   31M   5% /run
> /dev/vda1       2.9G  794M  2.0G  29% /
> tmpfs            58M     0   58M   0% /dev/shm
> tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
> tmpfs            58M     0   58M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
> tmpfs            12M     0   12M   0% /run/user/0
> #
> But that's also without X and such.  However, one can see, it's
> pretty light on resource consumption (and I do have sshd and bind9 
> running
> on it presently).
> 

Again, in case anyone is interested: with X and fluxbox (and a few other 
things to fullfill all my needs) my results are:
cat /etc/debian_version; free; df -h
10.3
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   
available
Mem:        3935164     1668544     1788028       93960      478592     
1947616
Swap:       4085756      509904     3575852
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           385M   11M  374M   3% /run
/dev/sda1       225G  3.9G  210G   2% /
tmpfs           1.9G   60M  1.9G   4% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           385M  8.0K  385M   1% /run/user/1000