Questions about RAM usage (Puppy on a USB stick)

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Coldbeerpunk
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue 16 Oct 2012, 15:05

Questions about RAM usage (Puppy on a USB stick)

#1 Post by Coldbeerpunk »

Hello good people, a few hours ago I installed Puppy Linux on the USB stick, and serves me as a live usb. However torturing me two questions. First, whether they are installing programs during operation of the operating system, I installed everything remains on the USB stick? The second and more important question is, does this OS has to be loaded into a frame, since when does anything he uses about 350 MB of RAM.

I want to reduce as much as possible the use of RAM so I want to know if there is a possibility that they do not have to set it to load everything into RAM? Thank you in advance for your help! Let me mention that I have 2 gb ram on a computer, but I think I use the live usb stick and on computers that have long been in use, or on certain laptops that have either 256 or 512 MB.

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TheYoungOne
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun 12 Feb 2012, 02:26

#2 Post by TheYoungOne »

I'm quite new as well. But when i use my live usb i have a savefile on it so everything i install e.g Chrome is saved on the savefile which is on the usb stick. I guess it is a frugal usb install
I also wanted to make sure i could run it on low ram computer so i added a 512mb swap partition on the usb stick using gparted. But i'm not sure if this would do the trick because i have never used it on a low ram computer.
Otherwise you could make sure the computer you want to boot puppy on already has a swap partition, then puppy will use it from what i gather.

I hope this is all correct, maybe you should wait for somebody else to comment before doing it :)
EDIT: I forgot to say welcome to the forum :)

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bigpup
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Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#3 Post by bigpup »

First, whether they are installing programs during operation of the operating system, I installed everything remains on the USB stick?
If save file is on the USB stick, yes everything is put on USB stick.
About ram usage. Read here about how Puppy works.
http://puppylinux.com/development/howpuppyworks.html
Basically do not be concerned if computer has 256MB or more of ram.
Puppy operating system is not the big user of ram. The programs you run are the big users and how many you have running at one time.
If you want to see how much memory just Puppy is using.
Boot Puppy to desktop and do not start any programs. Just have Puppy booted.
Run program:
menu->System->System Status and Config->Htop System Process Viewer
At the top of Htop window it will show ram usage.

If you want to see what effect a program has on ram usage. Keep Htop open and check it after starting a program.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#4 Post by bigpup »

I want to know if there is a possibility that they do not have to set it to load everything into RAM?
You can use the boot option puppy pfix=nocopy.
This makes Puppy boot only loading minimum data into ram to operate.
With Puppy booting from an install on a USB stick, it is basically already doing this, because of special operating instructions for operating from flash drives.

Puppy has built in instructions that direct how ram is used based on type of install, device installed on, device booting from, location of save file, and how much ram.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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