On Fri, 30 May 2014 03:00:21 +1000 Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt > <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote: > > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it > > every time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and > > granular choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small > > system. > > How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much > to go minimal? The least RAM machine I have available is 128MB. Debian CLI installs and runs fairly well on it. Debian + X + fvwm2 runs on it, but you wouldn't want to do any actual work on it. Upgrading it to 256MB with Debian + X + fvwm2 makes a decent machine for somebody who does nothing but web browsing without video and email. This information is about 6 months to a year old, and I think it involved a Debian 7.X OS. > I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video) > with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end, > rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM > while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up > or down to fit the screen), That's a much bigger challenge than what I was doing. > I ended up installing AntiX, which seems > to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all > my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily > for the month since I installed it. Thanks for the tip on AntiX. I'll try that the next time I experiment. > > Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a > GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use? Based on way too little experimentation (in other words, take this as my subjective opinion), if it can't run with fvwm2, it's not going to run with anything that imparts windows to applications. Although one of the smartest guys in our LUG uses fvwm (predecssor to fvwm2) and loves it, fvwm and fvwm2 are very hands-on, requiring extensive config, aren't particularly good for the person with less than 20/20 vision. If fvwm2 works, try Openbox: That's actually useful without working hard to interact with it. SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140529133647.4db48b3c@mydesk
