Disappointed? Saddened? Nostalgic? I’m trying to describe my reaction to Debian’s increased memory requirement.
It’s no surprise really, that the text-based installer on the business card CD wants 43Mb of memory to install. Mentally I had always put that number at 32Mb, which I really only inherited from working with Ubuntu for years.
Not so any more. Even as far back as a year ago, machines I upgraded from stable to testing couldn’t boot on 32Mb of memory. And the installer now says 43Mb is the bare minimum, officially.
It may be that there is a way to circumvent that — after all, the installer doesn’t quit, it just tells you that you’re on thin ice.
But I guess what that means is I need to invest in a couple of old sticks of PC66 … and stop whining about the old days. This is progress, take it or leave it. 🙂
Motho ke motho ka botho 
It seems that my old P100 with 40 MB (maximum upgrade) is now officially obsolete as Linux platform. Of course, the NetBSD should run on it…
I don’t know what the minimum requirements for FreeDos are but it chugs along quite nicely in the 1 MB of RAM that my Commodore 286LT has 😛
Reading that last sentence in your blog was a shocker 🙂
It is a little sad, though. I remember when I bought a 32Mb stick for my Amiga and it seemed like a ridiculous amount. It was, in a way: the system rarely used more than half of it.
Mind you, I also remember when 32K (on a Sinclair ZX81) was a lot. I can’t be old; I’m not even 40 yet. ;-P
My first computer had 4 KB of RAM. How times have changed. 😉
You heard him, guys, time to upgrade your RAM. 🙂
Never!
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