Re:HP Dev One Laptop with Pop_OS
by darthrupert on Saturday May 21, 2022 @06:15AM
(#31456668)
My first Linux machine ran on 8MB RAM. Ok, could be that some modern software would not run well on such a thing any more and a modern web browser is unthinkable.
When I studied computer science the VAX-750 had 4 MB and 15 students could compile at the same time from each their terminal. Swapping got a bit annoying under those conditions, but in the evening when a couple of them had gone home it started to run smoothly.
I remember phones from 20 years ago using something like 150 kB, admittedly they had no real operating system, just a simple task scheduler. Probably color display required a bit more already.
Of course there were numerous ways to make a 2 GB machine starve if you wanted to or just don't think what is feasible or not and run several crazy Electron apps or worse. Some lightweight containers are not a problem, I have run those.