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Best OS for 256MB and Below
grimsdottir
Member
in Help
I like the idea of low resource boxes and seeing what is possible to run on these little guys.
I'm curious what OS do you guys prefer when dealing with 256MB and below. Ideally the OS isn't going to take up much at all and it will leave the RAM for SSH connections and then software I want to run.
Comments
Debian - or if you're advanced, CentOS with a lot of stripping down.
use a minimal OS. I prefer centos, but ubuntu or debian are also fine. I run centos minimal on a 64MB VPS, and it's OK. depends what you need it to do
read somewhere that debian is about the leanest
Sounds like I can just run one of the usual OSes out there then. I usually run Ubuntu but I'd like to try out Debian on a box some time. Maybe a little 128 or 256 would be a good place to test out Debain.
Yeah I've read in a few places the Debian is very lean and good for low resource boxes. I'd be interested in running a side by side on the same host (or several hosts) and see how they stack up. Would have to account for what the template looks like though.
each distro is different. but most templates come from similar sources, so should be OK from host to host
Debian
Debian but make sure you use 32-bit.
I have some debians with 256mb for monitoring. They could also do something more, a fine stripping of services and a bit of tuning can give you good results.
Debian
32 bit Debian.
I have some 32MB Debian boxes running SoftEther.
Well the overwhelming choice is 32bit Deb. And then I can remove the stuff I don't need/want.
Guess I have a weekend project
Windows XP. I have a 32MB box running windows xp.
Debian 32 bit minimal installation. Its really lightweight
You can use just about anything, I have a Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit install on my 128mb vps from Ramnode only using 6mb right now, used Debian 8 64-bit on my old Atlantic 256mb VPS and it worked great too.
There are already Debian minimal templates out there, stripped everything that isn't needed to run the bare OS. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Bs, Windows XP does not boot below 64MB.
I guess my confusion is how do I use a pre-built minimal template with a hosting provider. Wouldn't they have their own?
Arch
I don't agree, on Ubuntu I've seen some providers include Postfix/sendmail and bind9, while others don't even have whiptail or bsdutils (meaning a lot of things are broken).
if the OS image is available online, some providers are OK with adding them
I'll check it out. Thanks
some nice stuff here: http://templates.joodle.nl/
Windows Vista
Jokes aside. I have a 128MB OpenVZ box running CentOS
No Debian 6.0 x86?
Why everything 64-bit?
ask @Joodle
I'm sure you can remove that limit using nLite or similar
Yep, funny story - minimal Ubuntu OpenVZ image and for some reason a cron script wasn't executing. An hour later, after messing with everything from the syntax to the time, I discovered it was missing the cron daemon...
Ubuntu 14.04 x86 runs fine with 256MB RAM.
I can run Mate, LXDE desktop with XRDP too.
Without dekstop 128MB would be enough.
What is the lightest desktop?
Openbox, fluxbox or something else?
Oh yeah, most of them do. However there are also scripts out there that can strip down an existing installation to the bare minimum.