On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 12:26:44PM -0600, Rob Healey wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 01:03:32PM -0500, Drew P. Vogel wrote:
> > Executive summary:  XFree86 uses a lot of address space to access card
> > registers and framebuffer space.  This shows up in "ps" listings, but
> > is not actually taking any physical memory.
> > 
> > It is entirely possible to run an X server that takes less than 1MB of
> > memory (using Keith Packard's Kdrive setup).  It is even possible to
> > have a full XFree86 server using about 2-4 MB.
> > 
> 
>    I originally stated the X was too big, notice I refered to the entire
>    system, not just the server. Once you load in the fonts and misc into
>    the server and the apps, and worse the LIBRARYS, into memory then your
>    physmem goes WAY down and thrashing starts. I spent enough years on
>    NetBSD/Amiga and NetBSD/x86 with 16M machines to know what is real
>    and what is imagined/sparse address space!
> 
>    The server size can be minimized but 16M of physical RAM + the X
>    system as a whole just doesn't work. In the old days the required libs
>    didn't consume the address space like they do now. Modern apps, fonts
>    and modules now make 16M unrealistic for practical use.

There are people working on the libraries, too.  The iPaq Linux people
have a useful X system running on their handheld, which has 32 MB.  I
don't have any information about how much memory it actually requires,
though.

-andy