Making Arch as lightweight as possible

synthead · 2010-01-12 02:26:14

Okay, I have a new challenge. I need to make Arch Linux as lightweight as possible to suit a machine with 64MB of RAM. I installed base and base-devel, xorg, awesome, hal, alsa, and some apps, so it's already what most users would consider extremely lightweight to modern standards, but I want to go into more depth than this. I've witnessed DSL using only about 4MB memory in the version they released a year or two ago, so I know this is possible! I think at this stage, my biggest enemies as far as RAM consumption goes is hal, the kernel, and xorg (I can post my processes of the running system if you guys are interested).

I'm trying to hunt down a 256MB PC100/PC133 SODIMM module for this laptop-esque machine, but I think this is an interesting challenge. In return for your support, I'll post pictures of what I'm running Arch on! It is a very obscure, unique machine that won many "best of" awards around 2000 that totally failed in the market. It is really cool and very rare.

ngoonee · 2010-01-12 02:30:29

I've seen -nox packages in the AUR and I've heard you can live without HAL. Not that I'm in any way interested to find out, of course .

sand_man · 2010-01-12 03:15:30

Never mind (didn't read the OP properly)

Last edited by sand_man (2010-01-12 03:15:59)

dwindle · 2010-01-12 03:16:50

Depending on what you want to use this workstation for, you could easily go without Xorg. I go days without it when I feel lazy.

Last edited by dwindle (2010-01-12 03:17:37)

milomouse · 2010-01-12 03:50:44

I live wonderfully without HAL. Even more-so, I use xorg-server-udev from the AUR, although it's version 1.7.4 so I'm not sure how much more/less RAM it uses than the Extra(repo) one with Hal dependencies. I generally stay in console unless I explicitly need something X-related like watching a DVD or something.

jac · 2010-01-12 10:06:09

Have you tried looking at what DSL is running, and trying out those programs/patches through ABS?

milomouse wrote:

I generally stay in console unless I explicitly need something X-related like watching a DVD or something.

Can't you do that if you're in a framebuffer, too? I know that mplayer will play movies there... or was it VLC? Just curious, how much memory does that use?

Zariel · 2010-01-12 11:46:29

You could try using xmonad or dwm for a less memory using WM, custom compile your kernel, disable things you dont need, build things with -Os, have a look at http://lwn.net/Articles/63516/

zowki · 2010-01-12 14:34:10

dwindle wrote:

Depending on what you want to use this workstation for, you could easily go without Xorg. I go days without it when I feel lazy.

Yes, I agree. Go sans X. One of the computers I use doesnt run X and it works great. You will realize that your computer runs way faster without the additional overhead Xorg.

Heres the programs which I commonly use:
- Graphical web browsing: links2 -g
- Text web browsing: elinks
- Music player: moc
- Video player: mplayer
- File management: mc
- Image viewer: fbi
- Email: mutt

I don't use GNU screen since you can't run framebuffer programs within screen sessions. Instead I just use all my a lot of TTYs.

timetrap · 2010-01-12 14:37:24

Mplayer without X .... I need to research frame buffers.

Dheart · 2010-01-12 17:25:51

You could go for feh as image viewer, haless xorg could be achieved with the AutoAddDevices "false" in the config. I also recomend recompiling (on more powerfull machine, of course) with -Os flag. You could use mpd with some command line client. nano for text editor. You could search through the packages for text editor that depends solely on gtk for example. However I can't think of any lightweight solution for office - OpenOffice is anything but lightweigh... Maybe wine + office '97... Don't know... Or OpenOffice.org 1x...
You could try some of the *box DE if you decide to stick to X.

orphius1970 · 2010-01-13 02:27:28

i use the following 2 aliases for easy playing of videos or dvds at cli

alias mpvid='mplayer -vo fbdev -fs -zoom -x 1680 -y 1050' # plays videos in runlevel3
alias mpdvd='mplayer -vo fbdev -fs -zoom -x 1680 -y 1050 dvd://' # plays dvds in runlevel3

edit to fit your resolution

brianhanna · 2010-01-13 03:22:38

DSL used a 2.4 kernel to be more lightweight. For a machine that old, 2.4 may work fine. It looks like it's still maintained/supported on kernel.org but I'm not sure how hard it would be to make it work with Arch. it may be easier to just build a custom 2.6 kernel.

milomouse · 2010-01-13 07:05:38

I need to research the fbdev+console mplayer thing too. I compile fbdev into mplayer (also have xf86-video-fbdev installed just in case) and it always freezes entire computer when I attempt to play it in console (runtime 3). When I try in X it just says I have the wrong size, even though I know what screen size I have. Anyway, I guess I'll continue researching this and see if I have to do anything in kernel config or not add "vga" to lilo.conf or something.

abstrakct · 2010-01-15 12:48:15

K. Mandla -- http://kmandla.wordpress.org

has written a lot about optimizing linux systems for old laptops with limited resources.
You can get a lot of tips there! He also reviews a lot of cli programs, if you need tips for
an x-less life

rwd · 2010-01-16 14:52:40

How about compile a stripped down kernel? the wiki has some info about that.

eldragon · 2010-01-16 15:38:45

rwd wrote:

How about compile a stripped down kernel? the wiki has some info about that.

how big is the kernel without modules?

im checking right now: stripped down kernel here = 1.7M (could go for less, but this is as far as i got with my knowledge)
default arch kernel = 7.3M

i guess its worth the effort for a 64mb system.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-12 02:26:14

Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#2 2010-01-12 02:30:29

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#3 2010-01-12 03:15:30

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#4 2010-01-12 03:16:50

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#5 2010-01-12 03:50:44

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#6 2010-01-12 10:06:09

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#7 2010-01-12 11:46:29

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#8 2010-01-12 14:34:10

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#9 2010-01-12 14:37:24

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#10 2010-01-12 17:25:51

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#11 2010-01-13 02:27:28

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#12 2010-01-13 03:22:38

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#13 2010-01-13 07:05:38

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#14 2010-01-15 12:48:15

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#15 2010-01-16 14:52:40

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

#16 2010-01-16 15:38:45

Re: Making Arch as lightweight as possible

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