Re: Hurd on old computers

[Chris Baird]

I was playing around with vmstat a while back, and think this
discussion finally gives me an excuse to post the measurements. :)

For my system running Debian GNU/Hurd (gnumach+hurd 20000301 CVS),
with no additional daemons or much else out of the ordinary, the
memory usage looked like:
                                                active inactive wired
                                               |------|--------|-----
To login:                                       5.69M   6.17M   2.08M
Within emacs (on console):                      7.66M   9.72M   2.29M
Within XFree-3.3.6 (2 xterms and little else):    11M   11.6M   2.77M
Compiling gnumach (on console, peak values):    15.6M   12.3M   3.33M

So you're looking at needing at least 16 megabytes of memory
(preferably RAM) to boot, and ~32 meg for any serious compiling. The
scrawniest machine I've personally tried GNU/Hurd on was a 486DX50 w/
20 meg of RAM, and while it did work, it wasn't very fun. (I never did
get it to completely compile the hurd sources; I think I estimated it
would take over 10 hours, and as someone who has to pay for his
electricity usage from his own pocket...)

-- 
Chris Baird,, <cjb@brushtail.apana.org.au>