From: drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: minimum good 386 for unix Date: 21 Oct 1992 20:52:51 GMT
In article <1992Oct21.144651.10399@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg> eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) writes:
>Sean P. Hull (seanhull@acsu.buffalo.edu) wrote:
>:
>: I'm looking to purchase a 386 that I can run Minix, 386bsd, and Linux
>You should tell what your main intention is. To compile sources or just to
>run binaries.
>
>: on. I don't want to spend a lot of money, so I will probably purchase
>: the machine used. Speed is an issue, obviously, but price is a bigger
>: one. Here's what a friend of mine recommends as a minimum system.
>: Any comments?
>:
>: >For a UNIX system, you should really have:
>
>MInix, and Linux runs happily with less than 1Mbyte.
You'll run out of memory if you boot the Linux distribution floppies
in 1M of memory.
If you plan on compiling anything, but no X, Linux will be happy in
4M. With 8M, X performance is acceptable.
>For 386bsd and X, you need at least 2 Mbyte. I have at least 8Mbyte
>but I do not think that this is important if my applications are small.
>
>: >
>: > - 8 meg memory (RAM is cheap now anyway)
>: > - Non interlaced monitor/card capable of at least 1024x768.
If you want X : yes. Text applications are less demmanding.
>: > - Three button mouse.
'X' can emulate a three button mouse with a two button mouse.
>: > - AT LEAST 200 meg hard drive. After you get the UNIX, emacs,
>: > swap space, and X11 on there, you wont have much space left.
A quick df under linux shows :
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda5 35853 34075 1778 95% /
/dev/hda8 25868 23577 2291 91% /mnt
Total of about 60 megs. That's for a full X11R5 installation,
net programs, GCC, kernel sources, left over .o's and .a's from
various builds, three kernel binaries, and tars of many distribution packages.
>If you want to compile X11 , you need more than that. At least 400Mbyte hard
>disk. I have a 240Mbyte hard disk of 386bsd full of sources even without
>X11 sources.
>
>For binaries, 386bsd need only 70 Megabyte with libraries for X11 and Xview,
>so that you can still compile X applications.
> For my oter system , I can even manage to have kernel soruces for
>less than 60Mbyte with swap space included.
>
With Linux .12, 4M of real memory, I built kernels in 10M of disk. Note that
this was with gcc, full 'C' library and header files, standard unix utilities,
vi, etc. gcc2.x is a bigger resource hogg than gcc1.4, but its still
possible to have a very small system.
>Minix does not have X. 32 Mbyte is sufficient.
>Linux should use about the same as 386bsd unless it already has shared lib.
Linux has had kernel support for shared libraries since the .1x days.
A few files from /usr/X11/bin :
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13316 Oct 2 04:40 xsetroot
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9220 Oct 2 04:41 xstdcmap
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 115716 Oct 2 04:51 xterm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 21508 Oct 2 05:06 xtetris
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13316 Oct 2 04:45 xwd
Total for all of the MIT R5 clients :
>du -sk /usr/X11/bin
3618 /usr/X11/bin
You just have to love shared libraries. Reduced disk space,
and reduced memory usage too...
-- Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows, IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but marketing's sins don't come close to those of legal departments. Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit.