Search very light linux for very weak computer

juliejames · 08-20-2018, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnson8

Hi,
I have some very old computers on the stock of my company which was unused and waited for better times.

Computer specification
Processor: Geode LX800 (500 MHz) – no PAE Support
Motherboard: WAFER-LX800-R12 Ver. 1.2 (B027)
Disk: ICF1000IPS - 512 MB (company iEi) (compact flash)
Memory: Kingston 256 MB

The idea is to use this computers as web kiosks - after launching, any browser should be opened in full screen mode and display the indicated web page. After the system has been shut down improperly and restarted, it should also display the indicated page. Except to displaying a simple HTML page, they are not supposed to do anything more. Site to display is one of the company's internal pages - simple HTML (there are no flash content or anything like that).

The problem I have is that I have very poor experience with linux and I can not find a distribution that could be installed on this hardware. Even AntiX net or ReactOS requires more disk space (AntiX 700 MB, ReactOS 650 MB disk space).
In case of suggestions for improvement this equipment - I can not use pendrives, because:
1. there is no space in the casing,
2. we do not have enough pendrives,
3. no one will give us money to buy new ones (maybe SanDisk Ultra Fit would be fine).
That's why I have to use what I have.

In searching for proper distribution I mainly used this site https://distrowatch.com/ I have already spent a while looking for the right distribution, but I wanted it to be relatively up to date and unfortunately I can not find anything suitable that would run on this equipment.
I think it will be necessary to look for something older and probably not being developed anymore. Please, give me a hint which distribution would be the best for me.
Except of displaying this simple page, computers will not have any other tasks, there is not touchscreen or none of these things, no mouse or keyboard will not be attached to the computers. Showing the page will be it’s only task and it will not be required to do anything more.

Thank you in advance for your help and all the answers, every tip will be valuable to me.
Regards

Thanks For this information...

YesItsMe · 08-22-2018, 06:07 PM

NetBSD could do.

Lysander666 · 01-03-2019, 07:24 AM

Sorry to bump this, but other posters and the OP may find this piece of information useful, a short study done by a old friend of mine, who discovered that, last year [i.e. 2017 actually], running a Linux system with 256MB RAM was impossible.

The evidence:

Quote:

In 2017, you just can't run a Linux desktop in 256MB of RAM, no matter
how hard you try. These days, most any/all graphical Web browsers
(even the "lightweight" ones) eat ~100MB of RAM at startup.

I base this contention on an antiX "live USB" instance running IceWM,
along with the Midori Web browser and a minimal text editor. Brought
the machine to its knees as soon as I opened up a second or third tab.

Now, there are probably things once could do to fudge that number
_slightly_ (turn off scripting, don't load images, etc.), but none of
them is going to help all *that* much.

tl;dr: Running a Linux desktop in 2017 requires at least 512MB of RAM.

anticapitalista · 01-03-2019, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lysander666

Sorry to bump this, but other posters and the OP may find this piece of information useful, a short study done by a old friend of mine, who discovered that, last year [i.e. 2017 actually], running a Linux system with 256MB RAM was impossible.

The evidence:

The evidence does not relate to running linux with 256MB RAM (you can), but running linux with a graphical browser. Not the same.

Lysander666 · 01-03-2019, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anticapitalista

The evidence does not relate to running linux with 256MB RAM (you can), but running linux with a graphical browser. Not the same.

That is a fair point. However, most users would require a graphical browser, I imagine. Even though you are correct in that Linux can be run on less, I found the information quite relevant to the topic and interesting.

nodir · 01-03-2019, 08:04 AM

Whoever claimed that should have made sure that it is correct:

Code:

# ps_mem.py | grep netsurf
Warning: Shared memory is slightly over-estimated by this system
for each program, so totals are not reported.
 72.0 KiB +  99.0 KiB = 171.0 KiB       netsurf
 35.7 MiB +   5.8 MiB =  41.5 MiB       netsurf-gtk
#

And, btw,my typicall daily RAM usage:

Code:

      109.3 MiB

so for me there is still quite some room.

Lysander666 · 01-03-2019, 08:16 AM

That's using Netsurf, though. Surely not good enough for daily browsing with Youtube access etc?

nodir · 01-03-2019, 08:22 AM

so you went from :
impossible to run at all to
impossible to use a graphical browser to
impossible to browsr youtube.

Lysander666 · 01-03-2019, 08:43 AM

Of course it is possible to run some semblance of a Linux system on a very small amount of RAM. One can run a base Slackware system purely by using packages from the A set. But these days, for full daily use, what is reasonably expected is to be able to use a browser, and a graphical one at that. Additionally, most, if not all users would expect to use Youtube either irregularly or daily. Even those users who are "anti Google" still use Youtube at least occasionally.

Indeed, you are correct in that a minimalist system can be run on a meagre amount of RAM, but for 99% of users this will not be a workable system for day to day use. So maybe my initial wording was wrong, it is not "impossible" but it is at best undesirable, and in most instances completely impractical.

anticapitalista · 01-03-2019, 08:59 AM

You don't *need* to watch youtube via a browser (though most people either choose to do so or don't know of the alternatives) eg smtube or, even lighter, mps-youtube

ondoho · 01-05-2019, 07:06 AM

^ or youtube-dl, my favorite, esp. in combination with mpv.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lysander666

a short study done by a old friend of mine, who discovered that, last year [i.e. 2017 actually], running a Linux system with 256MB RAM was impossible.

this is a completely erroneus statement, for several reasons, as already pointed out several times.
again:
- it does not mention a GUI at all
- it concentrates on using one of two or three mainstream browser, all of which are available on all proprietary or free operating systems - so really it should read "it is impossible to run chrome or firefox on 256MB RAM"
- what about swap anyhow? it won't make the browsing much nicer, but there's a reason for swap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lysander666

Of course it is possible to run some semblance of a Linux system on a very small amount of RAM.

why do an alternative, lightweight browser and alternative media playback tools reduce a perfectly good linux desktop to a "semblance"?
do you have some sort of absolute definition of what a "real" (i.e., not a semblance) Linux system is?
no, i didn't think so.

Lysander666 · 01-05-2019, 09:49 AM

The main purpose of this forum is to help other people. We do that by providing correct information that can help their user experience and use cases.

If information is seen to be incorrect, or proven to be so, it should be corrected in the interests of helping other community members. My post near the top of this page was only intended to help the OP should he still be interested in the issue at hand. It seems to have caused a lot of dissent.

I have been erroneous in my interpretation of the information I provided. Here are what I can see, are the issues with my post a few posts above.

1. My friend stated that he felt it was impossible to run a Linux desktop with 256MB of RAM. I misinterpreted this to be a Linux system. He never said a Linux system, he said a Linux desktop - that was my fault.

2. He bases this statement on running a browser with the desktop and, as has been pointed out, running Linux and running Linux with a graphical browser are not the same thing. I concur with this point but I hold that the very large majority of desktop users would fairly expect to use a graphical browser. He does state that, "these days, most any/all graphical Web browsers (even the "lightweight" ones) eat ~100MB of RAM at startup." The lightest browser I use is Falkon which takes around 236MB with one tab open. Netsurf, even though it takes very little RAM, is no good for surfing the majority of modern websites I tested it with. It cannot render the BBC website, the Guardian website, Reddit or Last FM. Sites like LQ rendered perfectly well, but unfortunately simply-designed sites like that are in the minority on the web these days.

3. ondoho - I personally use qmplay2, youtube-dl, Qupzilla on my netbook, so I do use lightweight tools. However, my netbook runs 2GB of RAM. I think using 256MB of RAM on that machine would cause it to severely struggle. When playing a video for instance, qmplay2 takes nearly 300MB of RAM.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

do you have some sort of absolute definition of what a "real" (i.e., not a semblance) Linux system is?
no, i didn't think so.

It's pertinent not to make assumptions about other posters, as I'm sure you know by now. One could, very easily, interpret a "real" Linux system as one which is usable daily for work and leisure tasks since "real" can also be defined as "complete". I think this definition would cover most cases. Whether you agree with that definition is another matter: if you do not, hopefully we can agree to disagree.

To sum up, I still do not think that my friend's statement was incorrect. He makes the assumption that one would use a graphical browser with a desktop - lightweight or otherwise - and I think this is a completely fair assumption these days. I feel that commenting further on the issue would be splitting hairs, so I hope that my comments have provided some clarification on the matter.

jsbjsb001 · 01-05-2019, 10:12 AM

While I do agree that there most certainly are "Linux systems" designed for machines with very little in the way of resources such as memory in particular (but not limited to); I think it's a fair statement that most Linux users that do things like watching YouTube, etc, would be using a graphical web browser such as, but not limited to, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc, with some kind of graphical environment such as a desktop environment of some description, which would require more than just 256MiB of memory to run (I think the memory requirement just for X itself is more than just 256MiB, if I'm not mistaken). If I have several tabs in Firefox for one open at the same time, there's probably around 100MiB of memory being taken up by each tab alone - particularly if I've watching YouTube.

If you are using something like Linux Mint, Ubuntu, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, etc, then it's more likely the user would be running a desktop environment of some description rather than just a window manager of some description. Therefore resource requirements would be greater than a system with just a window manager as the graphical environment, and that's before you have even opened Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.

nodir · 01-06-2019, 12:23 AM

Both last two comments sound way more reasonable then the first exaggeration, which assumed that everyone has certain needs when it comes to the computer and what they use it for, and how.

Still: xfce is a desktop environment and on itself is very easy on ressources, only slightly more than a window manager.

Lets assume it is correct that most users expect what was told: That is really sad. To me.

ondoho · 01-06-2019, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsbjsb001

I think the memory requirement just for X itself is more than just 256MiB, if I'm not mistaken

where did you get that information?

the internet is full of people showing off their low stats on Linux, and many of them run a GUI with way less than 100M(i)B RAM used...

not that i'm a follower of that particular fetish, but I dislike incorrect statements.