Memory requirements between releases

[Chris]

Chris wrote:

> 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
>

Sorry should have said:
tosh# uname -a
FreeBSD tosh.13dog.org 5.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0: Fri Jun  3 
12:51:33 BST 2005     
root at tosh.13dog.org:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/OLDCARD.TOSH  i386