My *nix world

Gentoo + Xfce = 98 MB of RAM

I succeed to tune my system so tight as it need only 98 MB of my 2GB of RAM to boot and run Xfce desktop.

I am using a custom compiled kernel 3.2.2 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux which starts in top of it a Xfce session. I have also everything, from network, logging, cron, ntp server, etc, so it is a fully functional Linux machine with Xfce desktop (I wrote more about its configuration here).

Why am I sharing this info? Because I want to highlight one of the best thing about this distro:

  • the ability to tweak your system to that point where it becomes slim, fast and more stable than any other distro.

When I'm saying it's fast it really loads fast. I know, running fast depends a lot of the precessing power, I have only a 2007 Compaq model laptop with T7250 processor (~2GHz) and a Corsair Force 3 SSD.

Few benchmarks:

  • Gimp : 2.5 sec
  • LibreOffice Calc,Writer : 1.5 sec
  • Thunderbird: 3 sec
  • Firefox: 3 sec
  • Eclipse Java EE IDE for Web Developers -  Juno Release (SWT,Mylin,DTP,WTP,Subversive SVN,EMF,RSE SSH) : 25 sec
  • Codeblocks (with all plugins installed/active): 10 sec
  • Thunar : < 1 sec
  • Leafpad : < 1 sec

I do not have tones of software installed, I keep installed only those apps that I really need. But if you take a look at the palette of application I have shown above you will see that if even it's about a graphical application, an Internet application, a programming tool or just an ordinary utility it loads fast (yes, I know: SSD also counts!).

Note: Actually it could be less than 98 MB because I have to run a proprietary script that was calculating and displaying on the screen the total memory usage (the script also consume ~5.58 MB of RAM - it's using ps, awk, sort, head, uniq):

Gentoo + Xfce = 98 MB of RAM

Now, if you think that this article was interesting don't forget to rate it. It shows me that you care and thus I will continue write about these things.

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Gentoo + Xfce = 98 MB of RAM

Eugen Mihailescu

Founder/programmer/one-man-show at Cubique Software
Always looking to learn more about *nix world, about the fundamental concepts of math, physics, electronics. I am also passionate about programming, database and systems administration. 16+ yrs experience in software development, designing enterprise systems, IT support and troubleshooting.
Gentoo + Xfce = 98 MB of RAM

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