Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 10:22:16 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Clemens Jaeger <clemens.jaeger@chello.at>, Jason Burgess <jb@fbfguns.com>, Alfonso Romero <ibac@prodigy.net.mx>, kitsune <kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com>, Matthew Emmerton <matt@gsicomp.on.ca>, Kent Stewart <kstewart@owt.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How much RAM is needed for FreeBSD Message-ID: <20030406005216.GC71181@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200304051141.59621.kstewart@owt.com> <20030406140629.1a8c8646.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> <002501c2fb9d$177954e0$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> <20030406125847.127128b0.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> <016f01c2fbb2$a325a920$0100a8c0@ibac> <3BD4A5842C8AE2428158AB1EE6DCC3774D64@mail.fbfguns.com> <3E8F02F6.2070105@chello.at> References: <20030406140629.1a8c8646.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> <3E8F02F6.2070105@chello.at> <20030406125847.127128b0.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> <002501c2fb9d$177954e0$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> <3E8F02F6.2070105@chello.at> <20030406125847.127128b0.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> <3E8F02F6.2070105@chello.at> <016f01c2fbb2$a325a920$0100a8c0@ibac> <3BD4A5842C8AE2428158AB1EE6DCC3774D64@mail.fbfguns.com> <3E8F02F6.2070105@chello.at>
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--hYooF8G/hrfVAmum Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Incorrect quotation On Saturday, 5 April 2003 at 14:33:37 -0600, Alfonso Romero wrote: > On Saturday, April 05, 2003 10:23 AM, Clemens Jaeger wrote: >> >> I was looking for information : how much RAM is needed to run FreeBSD on >> a Pentium Computer? >> There is no information on your website / documentation for Version 5.0 > > well, but if you try to use GNOME... with 32MB it took my Pentium > 133Mhz PC 30 minutes to load the environment! You certainly shouldn't be running memory-hungry suites like GNOME or KDE on systems with minimal memory. On Saturday, 5 April 2003 at 11:41:59 -0800, Kent Stewart wrote: > On Sunday 06 April 2003 12:06 pm, kitsune wrote: >> On Sat, 5 Apr 2003 12:59:23 -0500, Matthew Emmerton wrote: >>>> On Sat, 05 Apr 2003 18:23:18 +0200 >>>> Clemens Jaeger wrote: >>>>> I was looking for information : how much RAM is needed to run >>>>> FreeBSD on a Pentium Computer? There is no information on your >>>>> website / documentation for Version 5.0 >>>> >>>> should be something like 4Mb, iirc >>> >>> *cough*. You haven't tried to install FreeBSD since the 2.2.x days >>> then :) >>> >>> My recommendation is no less than 16MB. I think this is a valid minimum. We're pretty sure that we can no longer install in 8 MB. It's possible that it would work in 12 MB, but where do you find systems with that amount of memory? >> What was it like back then? It was generally possible in 4 MB in those days. We've seen cases of really trimmed kernels booting in 2 MB. >> Yeah, 16 works nicely, which is the smallest amount of ram I've >> ever had in a machine I installed FreeBSD on. For some definition of "nicely". Don't expect a ball of flame. > I think numbers like this border on meaningless. They are basically > what you need to just run the system. Well, sure, but that has a meaning. There are a number of applications, notably in networking, which don't need much more than minimum memory. As I observed above, you're not going to run X with a bloatware desktop on it. Expect to use at least 64 MB for that. > If you want to use it for something real, then you need more. How > much more depnds on what you want to do. For example, to use > X-Windows, you need 50-64MB just for X. You can run X in 32 MB. You need *much* more memory for Microsoft-like programs such as newer "desktops" and OpenOffice. I did some research on this while writing the relevant chapters for the fourth edition of "The Complete FreeBSD", which should be out soon (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cfreebsd/index.html). I had intended to describe only KDE or GNOME. After seeing how much memory they used and how little advantage you get from it, I added the alternative of fvwm2. It's not as easy to configure, but it runs in about 5% of the memory footprint, and it gives you just about all the functionality. > If you want to do a buildworld, you need Y MBs. Building the world is relatively easy on the system. > You need Y MB to run an application. For some other definition of Y? > If you want to do all of the above at the same time, then you have > to assign values to Y and add what is appropriate together. I think > the smallest machine that I used and didn't see a lot of swapping > was 128 MB. Swapping drops your effective memory speed from 8ns to 8 > ms.=20 Well, not quite. You get a page of instructions each time you swap. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply or reply to the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers --hYooF8G/hrfVAmum Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE+j3pAIubykFB6QiMRAvTDAJ9xDrCYKMCrYjZLJIO+0pvfw0YzIwCgkoH3 p9F1X++dVlhR9YiHTXH7/8w= =fvh6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --hYooF8G/hrfVAmum--
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