Reduce Your Ubuntu Linux Memory Footprint

An anonymous reader writes "The ideas in this article will help you breathe life (and some additional security) into your old Linux machines and make better use of Linux on aging hardware. In this article, learn how to accurately measure the amount of memory your Linux system uses. You also get practical advice on reducing your memory requirements using an Ubuntu system as an example. A lack of physical memory can severely hamper Linux performance. This will help you reduce your systems memory footprint and keep your old Linux system running the latest fully featured Linux applications smoothly."

Comments

To improve Ubuntu, run Gentoo?

[khasim]

Recompiling certain apps or libraries so that they are optimized for size and targeted to the specific CPU you are using can yield some memory gains. The Gentoo distribution is perfect for this, as you can easily recompile some or all of your system with the precise compilation flags you choose. Unfortunately, this is likely to be quite a lengthy process on an old machine.

And you aren't going to explain HOW to do so on Ubuntu, are you?

This "article" is practically content free. It compares Firefox's memory usage to Lynx. What the fuck?

How about some REAL information? Not "advice" such as

A good place to begin is with the services that are started automatically when the system boots -- though you need to be careful here so as to not remove anything that is necessary for your system to run. You will need to do some research into what is required by your particular distribution, and on how services are configured, as this will vary by distribution.

And the distribution you WERE talking about was Ubuntu. How about some FACTS that are directly related to Ubuntu?

A better title for this article would have been "Generic advice on how to see how much memory an application may use on Linux".

Who is this article intended to help?

[thousandinone]

What I'd like to know is whom, exactly, the target audience for this article is. At a glance, one would assume that the target is for someone relatively unfamiliar with Ubuntu, attempting to make it run more efficiently on a slower system. However, all the article states is _what_ to do. I could be wrong, but I would say that anyone unfamiliar enough with Ubuntu (or Linux in general) to actually need this information would not have any idea how to actually implement these changes. So is the article then targeted for experienced Ubuntu users who are trying to streamline a system? I would wager that any Linux user savvy enough to know how to implement the stated changes would also be savvy enough to have already made them. The article is a good premise to start from, I suppose, but in its current state I don't see how it is really helpful to anyone.

News Flash!

[bssteph]

Running smaller apps with less functionality MAY reduce your memory usage!

This article would be great if it had non-obvious content. Outside of the advice of "use things that don't use as much memory", the only thing the article provides is "find a way to make your favorite apps use less memory", and then some ambiguous and non-definitive help on 2.6's swappiness setting. As a "real" example of varying memory consumption, Lynx is compared against Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror. Great! Why not look at mutt vs. Thunderbird and KMail? irssi vs. XChat? And then why not just say "hey -- why not just use everything on the console/in ncurses?" Not that this is too surprising, the article is entirely about memory consumption, and only mentions lost features as a passing thought. (Disclaimer: I'm not ragging on any of the apps above, so don't start the flames.)

Not that the advice is bad, especially the section on looking for useless services and kernel bloat, but the rehash of it for the umpteenth time is just... *sigh* The section on swap is a bit misleading, as well. It is right, as it is written, but it fails to mention that swap is a good thing; if you're swapping out your running applications all the time, yes, something is wrong (your workload for the hardware, most likely), but otherwise you want to see swap being used. It makes room for stuff you're actually using. There are some clever VM behaviors out there (one example putting pages in swap *in case* they will need to be swapped out later [thus saving you the trouble]), but I don't remember which are in the default kernel.

Here's some real advice for running Linux (or anything) on old hardware: be rational. Ignore what machines you have and decide what you want. Then when you've done that, figure out what you want on your desktop, and what you just want. Offload anything that you don't need to have right in front of you. Want apache to serve a couple dinky files to friends? Okay, great, put THAT on your old P2. MythTV backend sucking up some cycles on the desktop? Move it to a VIA EPIA box and let it hog there and leave your desktop for desktoppy things. Being "lean" isn't worth it if it means you're ditching functionality you want. Don't try to struggle against old hardware if you want an awesome desktop and Beryl and the whole shebang. Sometimes you just have to let go of that 133 MHz Pentium you loved a decade ago.

Know your limits, install accordingly

[Brunellus]

Kill the flamethrowers. The article is about Ubuntu, not Gentoo. If you have a burning need to build a package from source, Gentoo-style, in a Debian or Debian-daughter system, consider apt-build which will get the job done for you.

Otherwise, the article was a very sensible discussion on installing the guts of a 'modern' distro--in this case Ubuntu--on some less than current hardware. Another such discussion is in the LowMemorySystems page in the Ubuntu wiki.

The important thing to take away, in any case, is the non-trivial lesson that you cannot have your cake and eat it, too: installing on limited hardware means understanding your hardware limits and considering your packages accordingly. (I hear bearded Slackers in the back chortling. Hush, you, let me finish first.),

Interestingly, the article confirms what I've been doing on my own IBM Thinkpad 570e lately. My only question to whomever still might be reading this is: is there a lightweight CSS-compatible browser that's not a memory pig on the order of Konqueror or even Firefox? Dillo works well enough, but I'm wondering if there isn't maybe a browser between Dillo and the heavyweights.

Best idea: Buy more memory

[Kludge]

I just bought a GB of RAM on ebay for $45 for my old 600 MHz server.
Trying to squirrel more functionality out of less RAM is a waste of time.
Everything flies so much faster when you have a nice big cache under you.

Missed something

[El Nigromante]

rm -rf / (as root)

Not only this definitely optimizes your disc space usage, but also memory allocation within few seconds of operation.

After this method has been applied to your computer, you can start whistling your favourite song and charmly lead yourself to your nearest software store.

(This advice has been kindly brought to you by M$)

Self Referential

[sameeer]

I think the article a parody onto itself.

By being unnecessarily obvious, and bloated mostly with a lot of useless information, it is trying to hog the reader's memory, the way processes might hog the system's. Thus, once the reader learns how to filter out the irrelevant and obvious stuff from the article, he can proceed to do the same to their Linux installation, reducing the memory requirement.

Bloody genius, I say. Brilliant!

some hints

[nadaou]

WM: Dump metacity etc for sawfish (or even smaller fluxbox).
File manager: Dump nautilus for rox.
Terminal: Drop gnome-terminal for rxvt.
Email: use sylpheed.
Web browser: use dillo.
Word processor: use AbiWord.
Spreadsheet: gnumeric

Reduce the number of virtual terms (ctrl-alt-f1 through f6) from 6 to 3 (in /etc/inittab comment out respawn:getty tty3-6).

start "top", sort by memory use ("M" once running) and start examining what daemons you don't need. (/etc/init.d/)

Yes, you too can run a modern & functional linux on a Penium75 with 32mb RAM.