200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop

blackbird9 said:
I remember using a PS/2 model 80 to run OS/2. It had a full graphical desktop, all kinds of software ran on it, editors, compilers, word processor, graphics, tcp/ip, etc.. It ran on a 386 cpu and had 8 MB RAM. My memory told me it had a 486... but wikipedia says a 386, so I think my memory is wrong. Of course that was before web browsers were a thing. The machine itself was built like a tank and very expensive, like all their kit. OS/2 had real multi-threading and pre-emptive multi-tasking, but unfortunately for ibm MS already owned the PC market and ibm had already lost control and was really unable to break in, especially given their daft policy to begin with of trying to sell you a very expensive, non-standard MCA bus PC to run it on; I think it took them a year to two before they decided to allow OS/2 to run on non-MCA PC's.. The OS/2 software was good though, windows didn't really catch up technically until they brought NT out, or maybe later than that.
en.wikipedia.org

IBM PS/2 Model 80 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 25003

Software seems to expand to fill the available hardware capacity... there has to be a "moores law" type rule for that.
Click to expand...
My first real computer was a also a PS/2 Model 80! Mine came with a *MASSIVE* 100 MB ESDI hard disk with DOS 3.30 installed.

At first I thought I'd been cheated because when I ran dir it showed that the C: drive only had 32MB. Eventually I discovered that that version of DOS could not handle such large partitions, and that I would have to create four partitions to be able to access the whole disk.

Happy days!
 
[Role play]
Hello, I'm in my twenties. I was thinking about using FreeBSD, but I see in this thread that it's for uncs.

Vocabulary sheet:
Unc: Old-timer (from "uncle").
 
I have a bhyve VM with 256m for kdc, but before freebsd-update I have to restart it with 1G.

Code: 
  535 root          1  20    0    24M  7460K select   0:03   0.00% krb5kdc
  549 root          1  20    0    16M  4444K select   0:02   0.00% kadmind

For my diploma thesis in 95 I ran Linux with 2m ram, X11, emacs, latex, g++ (but only one at a time).
 
AlfredoLlaquet said:
[Role play]
Hello, I'm in my twenties. I was thinking about using FreeBSD, but I see in this thread that it's for uncs.

Vocabulary sheet:
Unc: Old-timer (from "uncle").
Click to expand...
Maybe I can learn a lot from listening to those "uncs" 😁
It wasn't really very long ago that they were 20, too...
 
Not desktop, but Raspberry pi Zero 2 with 15.0.2 idle after installation:

Code: 
weberjn@zero2:~ $ top -b
last pid:  3650;  load averages:    0.00,    0.00,    0.00  up 0+13:13:04    07:47:06
25 processes:  1 running, 24 sleeping
CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  0.0% interrupt, 99.9% idle
Mem: 5264K Active, 28M Inact, 110M Wired, 34M Buf, 282M Free
Swap: 852M Total, 852M Free

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
 3635 weberjn       1   0    0    23M    11M select   3   0:00   0.10% sshd-session
 1903 root          1   0    0    13M  2312K select   0   0:04   0.00% powerd
 1895 ntpd          1   0    0    24M  7628K select   2   0:03   0.00% ntpd
 2009 root          1   0    0    13M  2600K nanslp   0   0:00   0.00% cron
 1382 root          1   0    0    23M  9380K select   0   0:00   0.00% wpa_supplicant
 1769 root          1   0    0    13M  2932K kqread   3   0:00   0.00% syslogd
 3632 root          1  11    0    23M    10M select   3   0:00   0.00% sshd-session
 1482 root          1   0    0    14M  4152K select   0   0:00   0.00% devd
 3636 weberjn       1   0    0    13M  3300K wait     2   0:00   0.00% sh
 1968 root          1   0    0    22M  9752K select   1   0:00   0.00% sshd
 1772 root          1   0    0    13M  2840K select   0   0:00   0.00% syslogd
 3650 weberjn       1   1    0    14M  3220K CPU0     0   0:00   0.00% top
 2028 root          1  59    0    13M  2348K ttyin    3   0:00   0.00% getty
 2031 root          1  59    0    13M  2348K ttyin    3   0:00   0.00% getty
 2036 root          1  59    0    13M  2340K ttyin    1   0:00   0.00% getty
 2035 root          1  59    0    13M  2348K ttyin    3   0:00   0.00% getty
 2030 root          1  59    0    13M  2344K ttyin    2   0:00   0.00% getty
 2033 root          1  59    0    13M  2352K ttyin    0   0:00   0.00% getty
 
blackbird9 said:
I noticed they don't appear to have a web browser in that setup... try running a browser in that footprint; well, apart from 'links', maybe 🤨
Click to expand...

I just tried Netsurf browser with my https://vermaden.wordpress.com/ page loaded - additional 83 MB RAM used. Not great. Not terrible.


vermaden_2026-02-13_22-18-26.png
 
Crivens said:
Classic MacOS (the old Macintosh) could run word in 128KB.
Click to expand...

I owned the Original Macintosh "FAT MAC". No really! It was called the Fat Mac :cool: -- so I had 512KB ! (Link): Wikipedia Fat Mac

To really maximize things you also had to have the (internal) 3 1/2 floppy (AND!) the external 3 1/2 floppy drive -- otherwise you would have to spend your life swapping different floppies every time the Mac asked you to.

Do... you really need more RAM memory than 128KB or 512KB?

Apple (cheated?) back in the day and had a 256KB ROM chip installed inside of those boxes that held all of the "important" stuff needed to run the original Macs.

FAT MACS -- Eat too much !
 
Anyhow, X or not X, Twitter or not Twitter, something so outrageous should get replicated in innumerable media outlets (if they are paying attention and care about what's newsworthy, that is).
 
How well do x11-wm/mcwm, x11-wm/ittywm or x11-wm/fswm run for low RAM usage?
covacat said:
200MB to run a bunch of xterms and brag about it when not so long ago
windows xp could run office in 128MB
windows 95 could run office with 16MB
sgi O2 shipped with 32MB
you could run kde with 32MB
a basic twm install worked with what 8 MB ?
sega dreamcast had kick ass games with 16MB

in early 90 you could ran TeX for dos + win30 + pagemaker in one fscking mb of ram and 20 mb hdd
now you need 4GB to ran notepad and mspaint
so now we need two orders of magnitude more of computing power to achieve the same productivity as 30 years ago
Click to expand...
I don't know what explains this. There is a tendency for some to make programs larger with more dependencies, using a justification with limited reasoning that there's lots of computing power and disk space. It doesn't make sense, bc why not have efficient programs running on a powerful computer. Then, accessibility and internationalization that's expected in modern software, could explain some memory needs, but to that extent?

When one graphical program runs at a time on a screen, less memory is used, such as how DOS did. Sega Dreamcast run one graphical program at a time. Window managers need more RAM to run, bc they have the capability to run and manage multiple programs at once.

8bit and 16bit PC's had desktops or window managers, and these were lightweight. Motiff and the first versions of gtk as toolkits were lightweight. The difference between the 1.x major version of gtk was lack of accessibility, internationalization and other deemed required features.

I also remember how the packaging or install screen for Windows 95 or Windows 2000 said it ran faster than its predecessor, yet it was slower and required more computing power. Windows 3.1 was installable from multiple floppy disks. Windows 95 installed from a CD in comparison.
 
What's a good menory usage measure?
I have this on a FreeBSD 15 system that forgot it's boot storage volume and runs entirely from a malloc md device or ramdisk, that contains a full binary world, using mfsroot and geom_uzip.
For Xorg with 3 xterms, top says: Mem: 1333M Active, 212M Inact, 1074M Wired, 500M Buf, 29G Free
Am I close to it? I probably still can remove a lot but this is what it's now.
 
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