debix is a sweet idea for lowmem installs, but some other options that might be more flexible (not needing a CD), and perhaps, more doable in the short term include: - Getting freeramdisk back into the busybox udeb. Freeing the initrd saves 4 to 8 mb depending on the initrd. - Making tmpfs use more memory. See bug #219528, which points out that currently d-i can use only 1/2 of memory for its initrd. This might get us down from say, 64 mb minimum to 48 mb (16 mb runtime + 32 mb initrd). No real numbers yet. - Add a create-swap udeb that somehow runs before most of d-i is loaded into the ramdisk. tmpfs would then be able to use the swap space. This could only work if support for the hard disk were already in the initrd, or were loaded before the rest of the installer, and if there was a clearly available partition to create the swap space on (or ask the user). Still, 16 mb installs seem to need something like debix.. By the way, would someone with some time like to iteratively do some installs with the memory limited on the boot line, to see what the current minimum memory requirement really is for i386? -- see shy jo
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