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Damn Small Linux

damnsmalllinux.org

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Re: Damn Small Linux

#51

Post by anthk »

HPsquared wrote: post #25
lionkor wrote: post #23

You can run an entire, productive modern Linux, (minus a modern browser*) on 128MB of RAM and one slow core. If you push lower, you start running into issues. I would recommend having around 200MB or so of swap for sudden spikes of memory usage. An aggressive userspace OOM killer may make life easier. On Linux, if you just run SDDM that launches xfce, you will quickly OOM the system, because SDDM will stay in memory.…

It's kind of cheating, but I wonder if you could set up some kind of "server side rendering proxy" that would run all the JS on a given page, and send the client a plain html page with hyperlinks in place of interactive JS elements. Edit: https://www.brow.sh/

Just use Dillo. It's something has videos, use mpv+yt-dlp.

~/.config/mpv/config:

    #start
    ytdl-format=bestvideo[height
~/yt-dlp.conf

    #start
    --format=bestvideo[height

Re: Damn Small Linux

#52

Post by anthk »

lionkor wrote: post #23

You can run an entire, productive modern Linux, (minus a modern browser*) on 128MB of RAM and one slow core. If you push lower, you start running into issues. I would recommend having around 200MB or so of swap for sudden spikes of memory usage. An aggressive userspace OOM killer may make life easier. On Linux, if you just run SDDM that launches xfce, you will quickly OOM the system, because SDDM will stay in memory.…

- Use Dillo with gopher/gemini plugins. Add mpv+yt-dlp, the some of the HN comments in this page has my hints posted.

Cookies setup for HN:

       ~/.dillo/cookiesrc

       news.ycombinator.com ACCEPT
       .news.ycombinator.com ACCEPT_SESSION
       hn.algolia.net ACCEPT
       .hn.algolia.net ACCEPT_SESSION
       hn.algonia.net ACCEPT
       .hn.algonia.net ACCEPT_SESSION
- Use ZRAM:

      sudo modprobe zram

      sudo zramctl --find-size 64MB

      sudo swapon /dev/zram0 -p 99
- Tiling sucks on small resolutions. Use CWM or IceWM.

- XTerm it's very small and works fine. I can posts Xresorces there.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#54

Post by vbezhenar »

dorfsmay wrote: post #43
monus wrote: post #9

The problem with old computers isn’t that they’re slow but fail randomly so they don’t need “smaller” Linux, they need more resiliency that can work with random RAM erros, corrupt disks, absurd CPU instruction failures. The size was a 90s problem.

The real issue is that old hardware use a lot of electrical power. You can get a small Single Board Computer with at least as much computing power as those but using 20 to 30 time less electrical power, and fitting in the palm of your hand.

It's not an issue, it's just a price to pay.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#55

Post by neilv »

I used to use this on a CD-ROM, for SSH-ing into my personal server to check email (from work or SO's place), when I didn't have a laptop or handheld with me. USB flash drives often didn't boot by default on PC hardware, but CD-ROMs did.

Later, I made an immutable "Swiss Army knife" USB stick distro called LilDeb, based on Debian Live. And literally carried it on a Swiss Army pocketknife on my keychain. LilDeb was implemented in two big shell scripts, which you can still see at: https://www.neilvandyke.org/lildeb/

Re: Damn Small Linux

#56

Post by vel0city »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #47
dusted wrote: post #18

I recently used it to boot a ~1996 Compaq Presario from CD-Rom to image the hard-drive to a USB stick before wiping it for my retro-computer fun :) It's kind of sad to hear "adult" people claim in all seriousness that it's reasonable that a kernel alone spends more memory than the minimum requirement for running Windows 95, the operating system with kernel, drivers, a graphical user interface and even a few graphical…

I mean why is that a problem? Win95 engineering reflects the hardware of the time, the same way today's software engineering reflects the hardware of our time. There's no ideal here, there's no "this is correct," etc its all constantly changing. This is like car guys today bemoaning the simpler carburetor age or the car guys before them bemoaning the model T age of simplicity. Its silly. There will never be a scenari…

I agree with this take. Win95's 4MB minimum/8MB recommended memory requirement and a 20MHz processor is seen as the acceptable place to draw the line but there were graphical desktops on the market before that on systems with 128K of RAM and 8MHz processors. Why aren't we considering Win95's requirements as ridiculously bloated?

Re: Damn Small Linux

#57

Post by declan_roberts »

I remember backpacking in Asia I kept a DSL bootable USB with me. When I'd visit a net cafe I'd simply boot into my DSL environment and bypass the entire windows PC (which was full of spyware and password stealing programs).

It worked great back then, I'm sure it works even better now.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#58

Post by marttt »

lionkor wrote: post #23

You can run an entire, productive modern Linux, (minus a modern browser*) on 128MB of RAM and one slow core. If you push lower, you start running into issues. I would recommend having around 200MB or so of swap for sudden spikes of memory usage. An aggressive userspace OOM killer may make life easier. On Linux, if you just run SDDM that launches xfce, you will quickly OOM the system, because SDDM will stay in memory.…

Another distro worth noting here is EasyOS, a current project by Puppy Linux creator Barry Kauler: https://easyos.org/

I remember having tested it, but can't remember what it was like :) -- at least it didn't make me switch from Tiny Core Linux, which I've used extensively. From a superficial, distro-hopper view, DSL, Puppy, EasyOS and Tiny Core all feel quite similar, I guess.

As a side note, it is interesting to see DSL and TC on the HN front page in two consecutive days of 2025. Both are very old projects; I wonder what's the impulse behind this current interest.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#59

Post by LeFantome »

bayindirh wrote: post #24
lionkor wrote: post #23

You can run an entire, productive modern Linux, (minus a modern browser*) on 128MB of RAM and one slow core. If you push lower, you start running into issues. I would recommend having around 200MB or so of swap for sudden spikes of memory usage. An aggressive userspace OOM killer may make life easier. On Linux, if you just run SDDM that launches xfce, you will quickly OOM the system, because SDDM will stay in memory.…

DSL is much older, and the original version came as a 50MB disk image. Current version clocks in ~700MB, again very small when compared to any modern Linux installation media. On the other hand, it seems like DSL takes a more extreme approach to slimming down i3/XFCE route, plus DSL contains Dillo which is arguably the latest modern-ish (to the most extent possible) and lightest browser in existence.

These days, DSL is just Debian with less installed. The 700 MB is a curated list of software chosen to fit on a CD image but you access to the full Debian repos.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#60

Post by LeFantome »

slim wrote: post #35
dusted wrote: post #18

I recently used it to boot a ~1996 Compaq Presario from CD-Rom to image the hard-drive to a USB stick before wiping it for my retro-computer fun :) It's kind of sad to hear "adult" people claim in all seriousness that it's reasonable that a kernel alone spends more memory than the minimum requirement for running Windows 95, the operating system with kernel, drivers, a graphical user interface and even a few graphical…

I got this insight from a previous thread : you can run linux with gui on the same specs as win 95 fine if your display resolution is 640x480. The framebuffer size is the issue

That and the fact that everything is 64 bit now. The Linux kernel is certainly much bigger though and probably has many more drivers loaded.

It is not one factor but the size of a single bitmap of the screen is certainly an issue.

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