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Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

(www.tinycorelinux.net)
518 points LorenDB | 1 comments | 06 Dec 25 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.195s | source
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trollbridge ◴[06 Dec 25 15:15 UTC] No.46173936[source]▶
Not to disrespect this, but it used to be entirely normal to have a GUI environment on a machine with 2MB of RAM and a 40MB disk.

Or 128K of ram and 400 kb disk for that matter.

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maccard ◴[06 Dec 25 15:26 UTC] No.46174032[source]▶
A single 1920x1080 framebuffer (which is a low resolution monitor in 2025 IMO) is 2MB. Add any compositing into the mix for multi window displays and it literally doesn’t fit in memory.
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snek_case ◴[06 Dec 25 16:38 UTC] No.46174618[source]▶
I had a 386 PC with 4MB of RAM when I was a kid, and it ran Windows 3.1 with a GUI, but that also had a VGA display at 640x480, and only 16-bit color (4 bits per pixel). So 153,600 bytes for the frame buffer.
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1. Dwedit ◴[06 Dec 25 16:40 UTC] No.46174630[source]▶
640 * 480 / 2 = 150KB for a classic 16-color VGA screen.