Re: 32GB HP Monstruosities
"You can't get any modern OS to run on 128MB of memory and 2GB of hard drive space. Not even a modern CLI-only Linux will exist happily in that*"
Well I decided to try it.
I downloaded Debian 9.0.6 x64 XFCE DVD#1 and ran the installer on a VM with 128MB of ram and a 2GB drive.
The installer said that it needed at least 167MB of free memory, although I was given the option to continue and a warning that it may cause issues. So I decided to bump up the ram to 256MB only for the smooth installation. I only installed the base system and standard system utilities plus SSH server. No Xorg or XFCE (that was an option). I allowed the installer to decide its own partitions (one partition was the default choice).
The HDD space was 46% used with approx 850MB remaining (some of the 2.0 GB was taken for a swap partition by the installer).
Upon boot the system is using 47MB out of the 256MB ram.
As I needed a more usable system than a base system I installed these:
Midnight Commander
Emacs24-nox
GCC (plus other needed packages)
lynx
So although 128MB ram was too little for the installer to guarantee correct operation I was able to get a system running with 256MB and 2 GB of space that can do some useful stuff. It can browse the web, transfer files, connect to a ssh server (and act as one) and develop python,perl and C.
I did try to install the bsd-games package however that was not on DVD #1 and I had not bothered adding a network mirror (I could have done so).
After all that I was left with 565MB of free HDD space. Totally enough to write some text based application code :)
I just wish I had Adventure on DVD 1. Guess I could add a network mirror or have fun writing my own!