cvs commit: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/installation/common install.sgml

[Bruce Evans]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, [iso-8859-1] Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

> "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah at FreeBSD.org> writes:
>>   Correct the minimum RAM requirements for i386 (24 MB to install,
>>   12 MB to run).  These technically reflect 5.3-RELEASE figures,
>>   but are probably closer to reality than the older numbers (8MB / 7MB).
>
> I can't boot 5.3 with only 12 MB under qemu.  16 MB works fine.
> sysinstall requires 24 MB but can probably do with less provided you
> configure swap; however, the install CD won't boot with only 16 MB.

I tried booting an old version of -current on a 486DX2/66 that happened
to have 16MB.  It didn't work fine, even after I removed a stray 3MB
debugging trace buffer.  Where RELENG_4 came up with about 12MB "avail"
in the boot messages, -current had only 8MB, and -current is much
hoggier later on too.  There ends up being only 2-4MB of memory available
for user threads, and the system swaps too much to be usable.

The 486 was also unusable since it had become too slow -- more than
twice as slow as it used to be even before it starts swapping, due to
a combination of factors including a large wastage for HZ = 1000.

So I would say that minimum requirements are an i586 with 24MB.  My
K6/233 with 64MB is still quite usable.

Bruce