unix and memory, sigh (was Re: What Happens If You Have > 9 Meg??

[Heiko Blume]

david at kessner.denver.co.us (David Kessner) writes:

>In article <1991Jan26.002917.21545 at lavaca.uh.edu> jet at karazm.math.uh.edu ("J. Eric Townsend") writes:
>>There's no reason the Amiga UNIX should need more than a few megs, as long
>>as you don't run some sort of windowing system (other than a bunch of
>>virtual ascii terminals).

>>J. Eric Townsend     Internet: jet at uh.edu    Bitnet: jet at UHOU

>Ah.  you hit on the problem.  Anyone who runs UNIX on a 386 or A3000 WITHOUT
>a windowing system is crazy.  

you are welcome to send me $2000 so i can purchase a good graphics card/monitor
for my 386.

>	GCC's executeable is about 1.8 meg.

sounds like you compiled it with -g and didn't strip it.
my gcc-cc1 is 477KB.

>	When compiling, GCC takes up a meg of RAM just for DATA.

do a 'make bigtest' on the flex source sometime, makes for a REALLY
big process :-)

>Now, sure, UNIX has virtual memory-- but it is not the Holy Grail.  It provides
>a nice 'catch' for when you do run out of RAM.  It also provides a way of
>telling you when it has done so-- it starts swapping to disk every time you
>switch windows!

i had much fun with some dozen diskless sun-3's running X in 4MB...
they swapped over the net so heavy that it took over 10 seconds to
get the root menu :-)
-- 
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