On 06/28/11 at 10:37pm, Jochen Schulz wrote: > lee: > > Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> writes: > > > >> Depending on what you want to use the machine for, you may be better > >> off using something like Damn Small Linux or even OpenWrt. When using > >> Debian, you will have to tweak the system quite a bit to ensure it > >> runs as fast as possible. > > > > Would starting with a minimal installation and adding only the needed > > packages later require much tweaking? > > I knew someone would ask that question. :) Ok, I'll bite. > > I'll try it using qemu. Wait a minute … The system is already swapping > while d-i is running. :) And installation takes ages, even on a Core2Duo > core at 2.4GHz and an Intel SSD. I didn't install any tasks, not even > the "Standard system utilities". > > Result: installation size of 384MB and only 8MB of RAM in use! That's a > lot less than I expected. > > Nevertheless, one should probably at least disable the installation of > Recommends and you have to be very picky about packages to install. I > wouldn't even run Apache on such a machine. Total RAM usage after Apache > installation: 13MB. Lighttpd uses 2MB less, dhttpd uses only one > additional MB. Running aptitude in TUI mode (without any webserver > running) makes the system use 23MB. Vim-tiny uses 1MB. Heck, even top > needs about 1MB! > > I still think it may be worthwhile to check out alternatives to Debian > that use slimmer libraries and less dependencies. My access point > (OpenWrt) runs from 8MB flash and offers an httpd, dropbear (an SSH > server), pppoe and dnsmasq with only 14 processes running. I've run my local router and webserver from a 100MHz machine with 100MB of RAM for more than 5 years -- is it really such a big difference? -- Liam
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