On 29-Nov-97 Todd Vierling spoke unto us all:
# I have yet another teeny 386-40 sitting here that is functioning as an
# X-terminal for my sparc.  Has anyone tried a standalone X server setup (rc
# consists only of ifconfig, route, swapon, and X) before, and if so, in how
# much memory?  I'd like to do away with th Micro-X DOS server I'm running
# (based on X11R5) and put a "real" X server on it, but I'm worried that even
# as the only user process running, X won't enjoy 4MB. 
# 
# (Point of interest:  I have a Trident 8900, not speedy, but I believe the
# support in the XFree86 server should be at least twice as fast as in
# Micro-X; that server is _very_ slow, much more so than the card itself.)
# 

My first (and for a long time only) machine was a 386-40 running X with 4 megs
of memory..

I never had another machine to send it X apps, so I had to run them all
locally at the time..

What I found out was this..  you can cut out alot of memory use by doing things
weirdly..

A) compile an older version of rxvt..  It's really tight on memory (thats what
it was originally designed for.. now its the biggest hog of them all)

B) compile anything run locally and strip the heck out of it.. get rid of all
the useless crap..  an old version of FVWM (1.2 or so) is GREAT because its
really lean and mean.. takes less memory than twm. (again, initially designed
for that.. now its another hog)

Shut off all daemons that aren't needed.  Login as root.

basically you need to run X, and get it to accept connections..  the best way
to do that would be to exec X, though you would need some way of running
xhost..  you may need to do something like have a script invoke it..  The
reason i used to exec X was that it would save the memory from having a shell
in memory of any kind..  It also helps alot if you strip all the junk out of
the kernel and compile an Xserver with ONLY the options and drivers you will
use..  every little bit helps..


It was pretty useable..  the card was only a 256k card.. so best I could do was
640x400.. which wasnt bad to tell truth.  I later reconfigured it to accept
remote X connections, and it worked pretty well.. though animations and whatnot
were horrible..  Even running xv locally was OK.. it just took a few minutes to
show up, and then seemed to be ok..

execing xinit seems to work pretty well.. thats what I did when I just ran the
one machine..  it only left a shell in memory.. which wasnt too bad..  never
found a way around it.. but It could be done with a network pretty easily, or a
wierd script..  Running it full remote is actually fairly speedy.. only your
video card will hold you back..

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.futureone.com
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html