Memory requirements between releases

[Chris]

Hi

The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform
" ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with 
a pared-down kernel"

The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
"FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM".

Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something 
different being measured?

I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a 
wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce 
the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it 
swaps like mad when compiling.  Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just 
after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes 
running.

Thanks for any suggestions

Chris