Which mint for low RAM computer?

[Aging Technogeek]

Let me add one more to the mix. A new LXDE distro called Peppermint. It is based on Lubuntu with some of the Mint tools included and a strong dose of cloud computing.

The entire office suite is Google based (Docs, Mail, Reader, Calender). The developers (including Mint's own Kendall, dev of Mint Fluxbox and LXDE) also use Prism to launch apps like Hulu, Last FM, Pandora, Cloud Player, and Youtube directly from the menu in their own single purpose browsers.

The ISO is only 400 MB but quite a few files are downloaded from the web during installation.

The website is here. Try it, you may like it. I do.

[thx1138]

Mint-LXDE needs less than 80 mb ram. I installed Peppermint a few days ago and 130 mb ram were gone. I installed both systems in virtualbox and used conky on both.

I add another Distro to that ones mentioned before: Salix (http://www.salixos.org/). Based on Slackware with a nice XFCE desktop. Needs as much ram as Mint LXDE/Fluxbox (less than 80 mb).

[deleted]

hmmm...
Didn't try Mint LXDE, I did try Mint Fluxbox on another pc. Peppermint seemed to out-perform Mint Fluxbox. When I get a free chance I'll install Mint LXDE and see what I can see.
-Hinto

[Colonel Panic]

Mint-LXDE needs less than 80 mb ram. I installed Peppermint a few days ago and 130 mb ram were gone. I installed both systems in virtualbox and used conky on both.

I add another Distro to that ones mentioned before: Salix (http://www.salixos.org/). Based on Slackware with a nice XFCE desktop. Needs as much ram as Mint LXDE/Fluxbox (less than 80 mb).

Thanks for the tip re Salix.

Just one thing though; when you say a distro needs X amount of RAM, does that refer to running or booting up? I've found most distros need more RAM to boot and get running than they do when actually in operation.

Conky's showing 180 MB now that I'm posting in Mint 8 XFCE, but I need the full 512 MB on my machine to boot it (I know because I wasn't able to when I only had 256 MB of RAM).

[mick55]

Conky's showing 180 MB now that I'm posting in Mint 8 XFCE, but I need the full 512 MB on my machine to boot it (I know because I wasn't able to when I only had 256 MB of RAM).

Conky does not show RAM used by buffers or cache.

If you really want to see how much RAM you are using, open
a terminal and run this command.

Code: Select all

free -m

Now compare that output to conky.




Yeah, I know.

mick

[Colonel Panic]

Conky's showing 180 MB now that I'm posting in Mint 8 XFCE, but I need the full 512 MB on my machine to boot it (I know because I wasn't able to when I only had 256 MB of RAM).

Conky does not show RAM used by buffers or cache.

If you really want to see how much RAM you are using, open
a terminal and run this command.

Code: Select all

free -m

Now compare that output to conky.

mick

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know about the "free" command, so I've learnt something today.

Here's what I get what I use it;

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 496 406 89 0 30 162
-/+ buffers/cache: 212 283
Swap: 0 0 0

so it does seem that Mint 8 requires 512 MB of RAM.

Best,

CP .

[mick55]

Hi Colonel Panic

The output from the "free" command also shows me something else about your system.

Either you have no swap or your swap is broken.

I doubt that you would purposely choose to have no swap considering your
small amount of RAM. Although that may be the case.

If you want to use a swap file/partition let me know, and provide the output
of these commands.(copy/paste to ensure accuracy.)

Code: Select all

free | grep Swap

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cat /etc/fstab

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sudo blkid

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sudo fdisk -l

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sudo lshw -C disk

mick

[axel668]

Problem about all Ubuntu based distributions is, that the graphical (LiveCD) Installer needs at least 160MB RAM. Otherwise Lubuntu claims to be content with 128MB RAM, if you start out with a minimal install (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/DocumentationHelp). Once you achieved this, you could "upgrade" to Mint by just adding the Mint Repos in software sources, I don't see any reason why Mint LXDE should need more resources than lubuntu.

Either way you won't have much fun with such a system, because the desktop will use up much of your RAM after booting and even starting a browser will cause swapping, so I'd recommend to go for a Puppy or DSL (Damn Small Linux) install. Antix Mepis (http://antix.mepis.org, Debian- based) might be another good alternative, it claims to focus on user friendlyness while being specially designed for old hardware (starting with Pentium2 and 64MB RAM).

[Colonel Panic]

Hi Colonel Panic

The output from the "free" command also shows me something else about your system.

Either you have no swap or your swap is broken.

I doubt that you would purposely choose to have no swap considering your small amount of RAM. Although that may be the case.

If you want to use a swap file/partition let me know, and provide the output of these commands.(copy/paste to ensure accuracy.)

Code: Select all

free | grep Swap

Code: Select all

cat /etc/fstab

Code: Select all

sudo blkid

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

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sudo lshw -C disk

mick

Hi Mick, thanks for the reply and advice.

I have a swap partition but it sometimes doesn't indicate as such when one of my other partitions has errors on it. I have to treat it with e2fsck before it will show up again (I notice this more with Puppy than Mint tbh).

When this happens my drive will show as "unallocated" in GParted as well.

Once I get back in Mint, I'll enable swap and let you see the few free output including the swap partition. It' isn't a lot different from the output without.

Best,

CP.

(I don't consider 512 MB of RAM small btw. I struggled with 32 MB for years before being given a computer with 256 MB which I've since upgraded to 512.

And my first computer had 8 MB of RAM! I suppose that like a lot of things it's relative and depends on what you want to do; not much of what I do is very RAM-intensive, mostly just browsing the Web, e-mail, small and simple office documents and (very) basic games.)

[mick55]

I have a swap partition but it sometimes doesn't indicate as such

If you provide the output to the commands I requested we may be able
to address your swap problem on a more permanent basis.

I don't consider 512 MB of RAM small btw

My comment was not a personal attack on the quantity of RAM you have installed.
It was merely an observation that Mint 9 needs a minimum of 512MB
of RAM as stated on their website.

If 512MB is enough for you, that's just dandy, but it does not change the facts,
and it makes it more imperative than usual to have a working swap.

As I stated in my previous post I am willing to assist you in getting it working.

I have no interest in debating the amount of RAM you need.

cheers

mick

[Colonel Panic]

Thanks Mick. I'll look into it when I've got a bit more time, maybe later on this week. For the now I've enabled swap manually (I've got 824 MB) and it seems to be working fine.

[mick55]

I've enabled swap manually (I've got 824 MB) and it seems to be working fine.

If it shows up when you run this command, then it's working.If you see 0 0 0 then it's not.

Code: Select all

free | grep Swap

cheers

mick

[Colonel Panic]

Thanks for replying again Mick.

Here's what I got from that command (free | grep Swap);

Swap 843404 0 843404

So it seems to be working OK at the moment.

Thanks anyway,

Colonel Panic .