How Much RAM does these distros use ?

@hippy you can't to use a modern operational system with 16MB of RAM. Windows Seven require 2GB of RAM. If you try to use a Linux from year 98 you can use easy 16MB of ram. And Windows 98 use a file as virtual memory, so you are using more memory than 16MB. A recent Linux for old computers can run with 24 MB (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/.....ex.php/FAQ). You can't use the best software with a tiny memory, but there are a lot of software in linux to old computers.

Quote from Skygod on December 11, 2011, 11:33

Quote from obarthelemy on December 11, 2011, 08:22
42.

6 x 9 = 42

"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"

:D

obviously a hoopy frood, who knows where his towel is!

as for how much memory.. it will depend entirely on what you want the OS to be capable of..
here's a screenshot of Damn Small Linux with GUI using only 36.6MB
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/.....2.3jwm.jpg
but it's probably not running much

Quote from Skygod on December 11, 2011, 11:33

Quote from obarthelemy on December 11, 2011, 08:22
42.

6 x 9 = 42

"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"

It all depends on what base you are working in :?

Douglas Adams said he hadn't realised. Just a bit of serendipity ;)

Quote from arm2 on December 16, 2011, 20:48

Quote from Skygod on December 11, 2011, 11:33

Quote from obarthelemy on December 11, 2011, 08:22
42.

6 x 9 = 42

"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"

It all depends on what base you are working in :?

Douglas Adams said he hadn't realised. Just a bit of serendipity ;)

Base 13.. unlucky! LOL

RE: DSL

Yes, DSL is amusing - that's about it. I keep a mini cd around to use as an NT pw cracking tool. When I first checked it out, I thought it'd be really cool, but found out quite quickly that the kernel was really ancient and the compatible browsers were several versions past those supported by most websites. I'm sure there are some uses for it, but it would seem that any system you put it on would be virtually an orphan. Plus it's a major azpain to maintain.

It's SICK fast though. Leaves your HEAD SPINNING. I even ran it on an old Pentium 200 MMX machine with 45M RAM and it performed acceptably.

Loved XMMS in it - basically a Winamp clone (I think you can even use Winamp Classic skins). Wanted it running in Xubuntu Karmic so I downloaded source from sourceforge and compiled it, but alas, too many unresolved dependencies.

Remember also that DSL (to my knowledge) is only available in x86 binary. It's not going to run on the ARM architecture - unless you can obtain source and recomplile it, but even so, you'd still have to depend on that ancient kernel which is half the size of that found in current distros.

For Arch, drop LXDE, use OpenBox + tint2 for task management.  I have used it for ArchLinux and ArchBang (non-tech friend wanted a quick setup) and the average RAM is about 150MB for desktop...

The Dev board could support it.

I haven't seen anyone mention uClibc.  16MB with a full featured system is easy.  We did it in the old days.  Glibc in most distributions these days is absolutely HUGE and few functions are ever used in this library.  Bloat, bloat, bloat.  Look for distributions that use uClibc, or search for glibc to uclibc conversion.  Best of all, the uclibc makefile can be set to compile only what you need.  If you are looking for an education, this is it.

Sometimes you have to optimize on size, not unused features.  Smaller is faster.  Sometimes less features means less bugs and increased security as a bonus!

Hi, I find Puppy (There are so many variants!) is the one I always go back to for a small fast and easy to use distro that is very light on Proc and memory usage.

You may be able to run windows 98 in 16mb of RAM but connect it to the net, no thanks, the anti virus alone would need 50-200mb or more let alone all the patches (Security patches stopped long ago) so really Win 98 is not an option where there is a virus risk.

Hello,

I am also very (very! very!) interested on available free RAM.

Can any of R-PI owners write how much RAM uses Debian and other distributions standard image???
How much in text mode? How much when going to graphical mode?

This wont take long and will help many people!

Thanks,
Arthur.

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 104372 86440 0 29704 57084
-/+ buffers/cache: 17584 173228
Swap: 0 0 0

it all depends - on what your doing or wanting to do or have been doing
you can add swap if you need more

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 104372 86440 0 29704 57084
-/+ buffers/cache: 17584 173228
Swap: 0 0 0

Thank you very much!

Is this for Debian standard image (available at download page)??

Free 86MB , not much. Total 190 MB ... that means that 64 MB goes for GPU, right?
Are those measurements made when you started GUI session? Or just bare text mode?

Thank you and I am looking forward for your response.
Arthur.

that is debian standard
well with a few stuff added and I'm using 128/128 split ATM
...
fresh boot

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 41796 149016 0 7180 21112
-/+ buffers/cache: 13504 177308
Swap: 0 0 0

X started :-
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 123144 67668 0 9992 50312
-/+ buffers/cache: 62840 127972
Swap: 0 0 0

that is debian standard
well with a few stuff added and I'm using 128/128 split ATM
...
fresh boot

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 41796 149016 0 7180 21112
-/+ buffers/cache: 13504 177308
Swap: 0 0 0

X started :-
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 190812 123144 67668 0 9992 50312
-/+ buffers/cache: 62840 127972
Swap: 0 0 0

Great!!

That means: 149 MB free RAM in text mode and 67 MB when using X.

Total 190 MB means that 64 MB went to GPU, right?
Changing this to 32 MB should give about 149+32 = ~180 MB free RAM.

That is very good information for me!

Now I wonder how much RAM will take simple Java "HelloWorld" program at any P-PI available JVM (for example Oracle Embedded Java 6 ) ... but this is a question for another thread .

Thank you,
Arthur.

Now I wonder how much RAM will take simple Java "HelloWorld" program at any P-PI available JVM (for example Oracle Embedded Java 6 ) ... but this is a question for another thread .

OK, my R-Pi is here , I can answer my own question.

(I am using Oracle Embedded Java 1.6.)

Java "HelloWorld" tooks about 4MB in RAM.

I also started my WWW REST server (Jetty+Jersey+Jackson+Apache Derby) and it tooks 33MB RAM. So there were pleny of free RAM (about 140-150MB).