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Shafayat

Smallest Os With Gui

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Try Minix, visit their official site here

Supposedly, it contains only 4000 lines of code, and can run off a 386 processor with only 8 MB of RAM.

You can download it as a live CD, but it is also possible to install it onto a Hard Disk.

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Hello there, can you give me link to any Operating system (no matter Linux or not) that has GUI but really small (e.g. near 2mb). And I have tried MinuteOS. Something else than that, please.

i suppose that by MinuteOS you actually mean MenuetOS, which is an operating system written entirely in assembly and fits on a single floppy.

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Hello there, can you give me link to any Operating system (no matter Linux or not) that has GUI but really small (e.g. near 2mb). And I have tried MinuteOS. Something else than that, please.

Hi,
why do you need this anyways ? Most of the processors (even Celerons) can handle Linux distros properly so why go for a stripped down version. As some ppl have suggested, you might wanna go for DSL or something like that.
You may also want to check Slax.org. Slax is a good option and pretty soon they'll be adding a customisation page to their site where you'll be able to get a complete customized Linux for your needs.
And slax can also run off a pen drive ;)

And a 2 MB linux distro is not possible since the kernel itself takes up around 20-25 MB.

I dont think its possible to cramp up a gui along with some good features in 2 mb.

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Hello All.This really depends on what you want to do with the OS?If you are actually looking for a windowing system that only uses minimal services that is different.spyzo101 has allready mentioned DamnSmallLinux, this is the one that immediately sprang to my mind.However there are a number of Linux distro's that are equally small, but run from the command line - which may not be what you are looking for.If you are looking for something to run on an "old" system then DamnSmallLinux should work a treat, if however you have a reasonable level of computing power then most of the Linux distros (my personal experience would suggest Ubuntu, SuSe, Debian) have a "small" version that you can download for a server (only has minimal system overhead, which is probably what you want).If you then want to have a nice GUI on the top then there are numerous ones available to Linux. The most commun GUI are KDE and Gnome (neither of which are particularly small), but there are a huge number of others available.The one that I use on my server (for those occasions I log onto it) is XVWM, is uses about half the amount of system resources compared to the likes of Gnome or KDE.The thing to remember with a small GUI is that you are going to "miss out" on various things, and having a small underlying OS could make your computing experience rather.... how do I put this.... painful!As I said at the begining what are you planing on using the computer for?Also do you really mean 2mb, or should that have read 2gb?I know of people putting a full working linux distrobution onto a USB key - that could be your answer if you want something that won't use up services on the terminal you are using or want to "take" your whole system with you.Essentialy there is no reason why you couldn't put a Linux version onto an external HDD and then plug into something like the Asus Eee - in fact thinking about it that would probably not be a bad idea!Give us an idea of the system that you are planing on running and what you want to do, and we should be able to give other suggestions.Dave

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Know Your HistorySmallest Os With Gui

Does no one remember the original Macintosh frm 1984? It has 128 kilobytes of memory, and booted a GUI OS off a single floppy.Within a year or two, a GUI OS called GEOS was available for the unenhanced Commodore 64 (64 kilobytes; 8-bit CPU). And here I see people pointing to a 15 meg OS as an example of economy.

-reply by are.J.Bowman

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2mb, no way would you be able to get an os with gui that small. That would probably just be enough to hold all the lines of code.Like the person somewhere above me, 50 mb is morelikely as you can actually have all the code and also have some pictures like icons. 2mb? Where did you get that figure btw?

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Windows 98se can be taken down to 50mb with litePC.Com,or much further if you study the work of Richard L James at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, now only an archive copy is available here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030630113305/http://cgi.www.wimborne.org/cgi-bin/www.wimborne.org/nph-rj/richard/projects/windows_on_a_floppy/

for systems this small only safe mode is available, without the registry either... Worth a look though,

best of luck,

M

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