How much RAM does Puppy need?

[Barbara]

Can you please tell me, how much RAM does Puppy Linux need? Is there minimum system requirements?

[rockedge]

Hello Barbara, Welcome to the kennels!

General hardware minimum system requirements are:

• CPU Type = x86, x86_64, AMD64

• 32bit Puppy's - CPU = single core Pentium 4 or equiv, RAM = 512mb

• 64bit Puppy's - CPU = 64 bit dual core, RAM = 1gb

Check out this section for more detailed information -> viewtopic.php?p=49101#p49101

[greengeek]

Realistically the sweet spot is 2 or 3Gb of RAM - and this should be supplemented by a 10GB swap partition which is available during the boot.
That is the way to get the best out of most Puppies.

[one]

Hi @greengeek,

I can agree to your "sweet spot" of 2-3 GB RAM - but why 10 GB swapspace? Compiling, woofCE ...? That is not what a "normal" user will do ...

peace

[amethyst]

It depends on what you actually do on the machine. I have 2GB RAM and never use a swapfile. And even when I have a swapfile it's never being used. The other day I created a 500MB swapfile, activated it but it wasn't used (even after extensive computing). I'm not sure if it actually works. I seem te recall with old Puppy's that the swapfile was actually used almost immediately after activation (well, at least one could see that it was actually active and working). These days I have a script which runs every hour to clear the memory caches.

[cobaka]

@Barbara

Others say, "Depends on your CPU and what you do." Correct.

My experience: A 15 y.o. P4 Pentium laptop with 512MiB runs better after the memory is increased to 2Gib.
Costs a $little for extra RAM, but you will get value for money. Running a 1.4GHz clock on a P4 I can watch YouTube movies.
The loading process is slower than a 3GHz CPU but once the video is up and running I see only minimal breaks during viewing.

Mostly I use an i3 CPU running with 8GiB of RAM. I use the terminal (or CLI/bash) a good deal.
I watch you-tube lectures and programs - as an example on-line courses about learning languages or lectures about history or sociology.
The speed of the internet (NBN at 10 mega-BITS per second) is the main brake on performance. (or 1 MiB per second).
I never play games etc, so CPU usage is modest. Converting a file format (eg MP4 to MP3) may exercise the CPU to 25%.

Hope this gives some understanding of how RAM affects the performance of my PCs.

Cobaka

[mikewalsh]

@Barbara :-

There's a distinct difference between what Puppy actually "needs" to be happy & work efficiently.....and what individual users may consider to be necessary.

My old rig expired at the start of the pandemic. Its replacement, with all the lockdowns, restrictions, etc, not going out at all & spending next to nothing, has had a lot of cash thrown at it that under normal circumstances I wouldn't have spent. Hence, it's now "maxed-out" @ 32GB of DDR4. I don't actually NEED anywhere near this much for a Puppy-only box, but I never wanted to be restricted again to the 3 GB of elderly DDR1 I had previously. (Some of this is, for me, a form of "future-proofing").

At least 2 other Puppy users are running with a humungous 64 GB....

These are 'extreme' examples, I hasten to add, and in no way represent what the average user will find themselves with. Anywhere from 2GB - 4GB, Puppy has plenty of room to run, and jump, and 'play'.

Puppy itself is not demanding, and its wants are modest. Software that you wish to run on it frequently needs more RAM than the system does..!

Mike.

[Grey]

At least 2 other Puppy users are running with a humungous 64 GB....

Well, it's simple with me. My initial goal is to build a system optimized in software and hardware for Blender and related programs. I have almost achieved this goal.

Blender is able to use ALL available memory, and Puppy uses a minimum of it. At the same time, the CUDA technology of the video card is used to calculate the image.

Of course someone will say that I can use a natural Ubuntu. I can. But factors such as a poor childhood, plus memory savings on ZX Spectrum have done their dirty work

[Barbara]

Thanks for all your help!

[greengeek]

I can agree to your "sweet spot" of 2-3 GB RAM - but why 10 GB swapspace? Compiling, woofCE ...? That is not what a "normal" user will do ...

Firstly please understand that these comments are based on my predominant use of 32 bit Puppys, non-PAE kernels, and oldish hardware. (It also applies to the very uncommon times when I use 64bit puppies, but again most of my hardware is old so my comments may not be applicable elsewhere).

In my experience these observations are true across a very broad range of Puppies, and across maybe 30 or 40 different laptops and desktops I have used - in other words many types of different hardware, (but nothing newer than an HP Elitebook 8440p)

There are 4 main reasons why booting with a large swap partition is beneficial:

1) Puppy grabs approx 1/3 of the swap partition for use as system 'pseudo-RAM' as long as that swap is available DURING BOOT - not switched on or added afterwards. This means that even a RAM challenged machine has a breathing space to absorb peak loads or extended need for RAM working space. This works even when running "live" from CD or without savefile - in other words straight out of the box the big swap makes the puppy far more powerful in what it can RELIABLY do.

2) The large swap (converted to pseudo-RAM during boot) makes Puppy capable of absorbing the massive and instantaneous, extremely brief spike demand that occurs at times - in particular when using a modern browser. (especially when the browser is opening up multiple tabs or caching multimedia). eg Google Chrome kicks off a million /proc processes in order to dice and slice data streams (in order to fool downloaders and improve DRM control etc) when browsers never used to do that in the old days. The browser demand for peak RAM availability is much much greater than it used to be.
(You can't see the peak spikes demanded by Chrome etc - they happen so fast you don't realise it until the machine just chokes - it is not reflected in the 'average' RAM demand revealed by htop etc).

3) Having a large swap (including the pseudo-RAM grabbed by Puppy) offers a huge working space for RAM intensive activities such as video processing or dvd/cd ripping. It lets me do stuff that Puppy cannot do without that extra RAM/pseudoRAM combination. (Ripping / converting / reburning a 4GB dvd is pretty hard without savefile unless you have 10GB or more of RAM which you obviously don't have in a machine with 2GB of RAM. If I load a 16GB swap partition then let Puppy grab 1/3 of that as pseudoRAM then the Puppy handles dvd and video file processing jobs easily).

4) Puppy's handling of swap (and 'swappiness') has never worked correctly OOTB in my opinion. (Probably an observation relative to all Linux rather than just Puppy). When running with no swap - or even a small swap like 1GB, Puppies running on older hardware simply "choke" to death at times for no apparent reason. Everything slows to a crawl then seems to hang (one reason why save files get corrupted sometimes).

It is easy to try the pseudoRAM idea - just set up a large swap partition somewhere and boot with it available. Obviously having a swap partition on the fastest possible device (eg HDD or SSD) is beneficial - but most often I will just make up a 16GB usb stick formatted as Linux swap and just have it plugged into the fastest usb port before I start booting.

(identify which is your fastest port by running read/write tests to a fast stick).

[Clarity]

@amethyst Have you or could you post this 'periodic' routine that you referenced, earlier.

I, for one, would be curious to see how you manage to use 64bit PUPs that are active on the internet that run without using a SWAP with no degidation.

That would be a plus!

Thanks in advance
P.S. @greengeek, THANKS for that explanation. I was not aware of the boot-time efforts involve when swap is present. I had always ensured that SWAP match RAM to match past recommendations of decades ago. But, your info suggest a benefit that I was unaware of...and certainly would have a positive impact on system behavior.

[amethyst]

@amethyst Have you or could you post this 'periodic' routine that you referenced, earlier.

I, for one, would be curious to see how you manage to use 64bit PUPs that are active on the internet that run without using a SWAP with no degidation.

That would be a plus!

Thanks in advance
P.S. @greengeek, THANKS for that explanation. I was not aware of the boot-time efforts involve when swap is present. I had always ensured that SWAP match RAM to match past recommendations of decades ago. But, your info suggest a benefit that I was unaware of...and certainly would have a positive impact on system behavior.

The command is:

Code: Select all

sync
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Note that this is not suppose to be a replacement for a swapfile/partition but may be useful for some. I don't use 64-bit Puppys and I generally also don't do heavy computing tasks like video editing, etc. In my case it helps when I'm watching HQ videos for a long time on my old laptop for example.

[Clarity]

jTEsted echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches on my FossaPUP64.

Went to console, logged out and back in. In console ran 'free' command. Then ran the above command. Rerunning free showed no perceived difference and the cache-buffer totals remained the same.

In this case on this system the command does not appear to offer any benefit.

I was hoping for something that would free cache-buffer totals before restarting the desktop.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.