Acer netbook with 64 bit Linux versions freezes on Internet

[stevie pup]

I have an Acer netbook which I use mainly to just experiment with different Linux distros (I have another laptop for doing "proper" stuff). It's a fairly under powered thing, Celeron 1.5Ghz processor and only 2Gb RAM, and I think only 1.7Gb of that is classed as usable. It is however definitely 64 bit. When I first got it I found the previous owner had installed Linux Mint, but a 32 bit version, which I thought was a little odd, but now I'm finding out why. I've tried FossaPup, BionicPup32 and BionicPup64 so far, and I've had no problems with documents, playing music files or video files, or connecting to my wifi. Must say I'm quite impressed with the simple set up procedure, and how responsive everything is. That is until I go to the internet. Everything's ok to start with, but then after a short while the RAM usage hits 100% (I've monitored it), everything freezes, with no sign of it coming back to life, and I have to switch it off and start again. This only happens with the 64 bit versions, BionicPup32 was fine. I'm running them all in live mode from USB sticks. I've also tried a couple of other Linux distros and I get similar problems with 64 bit versions, so I know it's not just Puppy.

So what to do about it? The issue does seem to be more prevalent with certain websites (the ones with most ads?) but to suggest avoiding those sites isn't really going to be practical. For the time being I can continue using 32 bit versions, but it looks to me as though support for 32 bit anything is disappearing at an alarming rate. Would installing a Puppy make things better, or worse, bearing in mind the pathetic little processor? Would I be better off using an older Puppy? Do any of the older ones use significantly less resources? Or should I be looking more at the device itself for the problem? Any suggestions welcome, and I'm happy to try things out.

Apologies if I've rambled on a bit, or not provided sufficient information, or posted this in the wrong place, or anything else. This is my first post so it may take me a short while to get the hang of things. Thank you

[mikewalsh]

Hallo, @stevie pup . And to the 'kennels'..!

That, um, does seem 'odd', I must admit.

However, unlike most of the mainstream distros, where they will chew your ear out for wanting to run older versions (oh, can't have THAT! Unsecure, dangerous, risky, blah blah blah.....) an older Puppy can be just as secure as a newer one.......because of the unique way in which Pup runs.

For a old low-power Celeron like that, Puppy should be ideal. The issue, of course, as time goes by, even Puppy is getting bigger & bigger.....considering it's based around 'binary compatibility' with usually Ubuntu, Slackware or Debian.

Elderly Pups used to be perhaps 100 MB in size. Current, 'buntu-based ones are creeping up towards 450-500 MB, but it's a sign of the times. It's ALSO a sign of how lazy coders have become..!

Personally, I would give a few of the older 32-bit Pups a look. Xenialpup 7.5; DPup 'Stretch'; Slacko 5.7.1.....even, perhaps, Tahrpup 6.0.5. A few suggestions for you there. I'm certain others will chip-in with their own suggestions before long.....

----------------------------

A browser packaged with Puppy in mind, and use of appropriate ad-blocking & script-blocking extensions will perhaps go a long way towards helping to make your internet experience a tad more enjoyable. My ancient Dell lappie - not far off its 19th birthday! - is still going strong because of Puppy. And that's P4-based, with a gig-and-a-half of ancient, DDR1 RAM.

We should be able to get you sorted with something 'suitable'. It's not often we have to admit defeat!

Mike.

[r96chase]

It's ALSO a sign of how lazy coders have become..!

@mikewalsh You would think that stuff like Pico-8 would teach them how to save space in code.

[Grey]

2Gb RAM

A 64-bit operating system is good if you have 4 or more gigabytes of RAM. You have 2. I would opt for a 32-bit system.

Pico-8 would teach them how to save space in code.

Pico is great fun. And you are and mikewalsh absolutely right. Now even on the ZX Spectrum ready-made engines are used and people do not want to teach the Zilog Z80 assembly language

[r96chase]

Now even on the ZX Spectrum ready-made engines are used and people do not want to teach the Zilog Z80 assembly language

I mean...I'm a bit lazy myself tbh and would like to learn batariBasic so I can make Atari 2600 games.

For those not in the know, batariBasic is a dialect of BASIC that made for making games for the...well, you get the idea.

Anyway, I also feel like learning assembly for the Atari 2600 is growing popular too, considering there is a book and a web-based IDE out there.

Note: the same author of the book also wrote about making games for the NES too.

[MochiMoppel]

This only happens with the 64 bit versions <snip> Would I be better off using an older Puppy? Do any of the older ones use significantly less resources?

I also use an Acer netbook for experimenting with 64bit Puppies, and mine is even slightly less powered (2GB RAM, AMD C-50). I ran into the same problem. It seems that this is not a question of older or newer Puppy but indeed a question of 32 or 64bit. The 64bit Puppies I tried start off with considerable less free "personal storage" RAM than their 32bit counterparts. I tried to explain my dilemma in this thread. With only 340MB left after boot this amount will quickly be eaten by the browser cache. You *should* receive a warning when the free space runs out, do you? You should try to limit the cache size of your browser. Depending on browser there should be options for that. I turned off disk cache completely, allow only a small amount of memory cache and let the browser purge the cache on exit.

[bigpup]

The newer kernels, that are in newer Puppy versions, handle control of RAM usage different than in the past.
RAM set aside for memory cache and buffers, is still free to use for other stuff, if needed.
look in Pup-Sysinfo->Devices->Memory to see what is actually free to use.

Puppy Linux is not your problem.

I use Fossapup64 9.5 on a similar spec computer and it runs good for me.
You do have to limit how much you have running at one time.
But you only can look at one program at a time.

The settings in whatever browser you are using is the problem.

Look in the browsers preferences.
Cache settings. How much you limit it.
History settings.

Try only having one or two tabs open at a time.

You seem to indicate you are going to web sites wilh a lot of background stuff going on.
Look for add-ons to the browser to stop some of this stuff.
Adds, videos, pop-ups, etc.........

If you are running Puppy as a live boot from a USB or CD.
It does need to use some of the RAM for a save RAMdisk.
There are boot menu entry options to change this and how much of Puppy loads into RAM.

Do you want to keep Mint installed or make the computer a Puppy only OS?

[williams2]

Linux has an Out Of memory killer (oom_klller)
Currently, The oom-killer does not seem to work, In Puppy and in other linux distros.

You can try to configure it so that it works better. Search the net for oom killer, oom_kill_allocating_task etc etc.

Or you can try earlyoom - Early OOM Daemon for Linux
https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

For Debian 10+ and Ubuntu 18.04+, there's a Debian package

So I downlaoded a precompiled .deb from https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/earlyoom/download
i unzipped it, put it in /root/my-applications/bin/ ( /usr/bin/ would also work )
It's a single executable file, 34k.
I ran it in a text terminal (console) earlyoom -r 0 & disown
It seems to be running properly.
It causes tail /dev/zero to be killed.
In BionicPuP64, anyway.

A good place to start it from automatically at boot might be /etc/rc.d/rc.local
Paste something like earlyoom -r 0 & disown into /etc/rc.d/rc.local

It should kill the process using large amounts of ram, and prevent the operating system from crashing.
It uses about 200k of ram when running.
I don't know how well it works, I've only had it running for 10 or 15 minutes.

64 bits can use more ram than 32 bits.

[stevie pup]

Well I am impressed, I wasn't really expecting so many responses in such a short space of time, thank you all. Must admit I breathed a sigh of relief when I found someone else had experienced the same issue, as that's a good sign it isn't just me having done something stupid. I think I will start by checking the cache thing in the browser, and probably give Xenial Pup a try, then work back from that if necessary. I may well install a Pup, and see how that goes, I don't need to keep Linux Mint on it.

There does seem to be a general consensus that I should stick to 32 bit, but that brings me back to the point I made about diminishing support for 32 bit systems. Any comments on that point would be welcome. Limiting usage to only doing one thing at a time, or only having one browser tab open isn't a problem, I generally do anyway. Never was one for much multitasking.

And yes I'm well aware of how virtually all OS's have got bigger and bigger, and more resource hungry over the years, and all for what? Exactly what does the Windows 10 PC I use at work do that my old XP machine from 15 years ago didn't do? Ok, it's got a webcam, but apart from that? It's got a load more bells, whistles and features that I don't need and will never, ever use! It's also got 16x more RAM, does it do anything 16x faster? No, course it doesn't. I believe all this comes under the term "progress".

Thank you all again, and I will keep you posted on my progress (or not, as the case may be). By the way, love Bigpup's sign off, regarding being a kid and wanting to be older. Exactly same line of thinking as myself.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

Well, using a 'portable' browser will help with the browser cache, etc, since it's all self-contained within the portable's directory. We offer these as well; are you a Chrome man, or a Firefox devotee?

I myself package a couple of 32-bit Chromium-based browsers in 'portable' format; SRWare's 'Iron' browser, and a 32-bit build of Vivaldi. You haven't been able to get 32-bit Chrome on Linux since 2016; Google dropped support for the 32-bit Linux build of Chrome a LONG time ago, but the Iron browser offers an identical experience.....I'd go so far as to say that for most folks, if they didn't know they were using Iron instead of Chrome, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. That's how similar they are.

You'll also find that running Chromium-based browsers under Linux is a far smoother experience than it is in Windoze..!

There's also portable versions of Firefox Quantum and the ESR (Extended Support Release) build available, too. All of these can, if required, be run from a USB flash drive, keeping them further dissociated from the OS itself, and well away from the 'save'.

---------------------------------------------------------

I'd recommend trying Xenialpup 7.5 on that little Acer; support for its 'parent' distro, Ubuntu 16.04 'Xenial Xerus', has only just gone EOL a couple of weeks ago, but much available 32-bit software will still work with it fine for a long time to come yet.

Tahrpup32 IS getting a bit long in the tooth now, and will complain about a number of newer items. Bionicpup32 may, just MAY, prove a little bit too much for the Acer, since you're quite constrained for resources there.

As for the built-in apps/programs, if they work for you, they work; there's rarely any real need to constantly update/upgrade things the way MyCrudSoft is fond of forcing you to do. And if you DO want anything particular, I'm certain we can help you one way or another. There's hope yet.....

Just some ideas for ya!

Mike.

[Clarity]

Anyone care to mentions SWAP.

I dont have a netbook, but this sure seems the likely candidate to the OP's problem.

[mikewalsh]

Anyone care to mentions SWAP.

I dont have a netbook, but this sure seems the likely candidate to the OP's problem.

Mm. We did rather "drop the ball" there, didn't we?

@stevie pup :-

Adding a 2 GB swap partition would take some of the strain off the system, since your Acer then would NOT be trying to do everything with a rather limited amount of RAM. I'm not certain quite what the best "swappiness" setting would be, but I suspect the standard '60' wouldn't hurt in this instance....

Mike.

[MagicZaurus]

You could try to use ZRAM (Compressed RAM) as Swap. I'm running Bionicpup32 in a VM with only 672 MB of RAM and use the following.

Code: Select all

modprobe zram
echo 1G > /sys/block/zram0/disksize
mkswap --label zram0 /dev/zram0
swapon --priority 100 /dev/zram0

After you booted, open a terminal and execute the 4 lines one by one. That gives you 1GB of compressed swap in RAM. The compression ratio is usually at least 1:2, so the 1GB will only occupy 500MB or less of physical RAM. A trick to 'extend' your RAM, but will keep your CPU a little bit more busy with compressing and decompressing. Should be still faster than swap on disk. I haven't tried it, but I assume this should also work in the 64Bit Pups you tried.

[gyrog]

Xenialpup 32bit is my normal Puppy, and though I have 4GiB of memory, I also have a 4GIB swap partition on the slowest part of my internal hard drive.
To me it's insurance, if the machine starts swapping, then hopefuly I will notice how terribly slow it is going, and realise I've run out of real memory, before the kernel hangs.

I like a swap partition, because each Puppy will automaticlally find and use it, during boot.
When I frugal install another Puppy, (which I do a lot), I don't even have to rember about swap.

[mikewalsh]

Xenialpup 32bit is my normal Puppy, and though I have 4GiB of memory, I also have a 4GIB swap partition on the slowest part of my internal hard drive.
To me it's insurance, if the machine starts swapping, then hopefully I will notice how terribly slow it is going, and realise I've run out of real memory, before the kernel hangs.

I like a swap partition, because each Puppy will automatically find and use it, during boot.
When I frugal install another Puppy, (which I do a lot), I don't even have to remember about swap.

I've got 32GB DDR4. I've also got 56 GB of swap space..... (seriously!!)

I probably don't need swap at all with this amount of RAM. But there's somewhere around 5 TB of disk space to play with.....and I DO hibernate on a semi-regular basis (this HP tower demands a contiguous block of swap space at least equivalent to the RAM in size, if you want to do this....)

Over the last 15 months or so I've upgraded from the original 4GB all the way to 32GB. Since maxing-out around October last year, I soon found out that the HP will 'mirror' the entire RAM area to HDD, regardless of how full it is. And it doesn't like splitting that 32GB up between multiple smaller swap areas, in multiple alternate locations. If it can't have 32 GB all in the same place, it won't play ball....

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[Wiz57]

I'm using an Acer Aspire One AO150 right now, it has 1 gig RAM, 120 gig HD, Intel Atom N270CPU
which is 32 bit only. Been using various Slacko and ScPups with 500meg swapfile. Never really
notice much swapping, UNLESS I attempt to run a newer (anything after June of 2020) version 5
kernel based Slacko or ScPup...in my experience, something has changed in version 5 series in
regards to accessing NTFS drives (my pups are frugal installed to the HD, boot via grub4dos,
swap file located on the NTFS drive). Anything I do that might access the HD, either a web browser
or even RoxFiler, PCManFM etc. seems to hang sometimes for over a minute. Makes this little
netbook run like an old 286 dual floppy I once had. Anyhow, I downgraded to ScPup 20.01+6-T
with the 4.14.160 lxpup-32-pae kernel, and all is happy again. I also boot to ArchPup32, and
it has a version 4 kernel as well. These pups might be good candidates for the OPs netbook.
Wiz

[MochiMoppel]

@stevie pup As mentioned in my earlier post, the 64bit distros I tested so far leave little RAM on my Acer netbook. Heavy use of the browser can quickly fill this RAM, leading to system freeze.

I'm currently testing slacko64-8.2 on my Acer Aspire One 722.
Yes, this is a alpha release and some wrinkles still have to be ironed out, but none of the problems are serious and the distro works OOTB.

What is really outstanding: After boot (everything loaded into RAM) out of 1.3GiB "personal storage" I still have 850MiB "free space" left. That's a pretty good amount and gives the system enough room to breathe.

The second good news: Slacko64-8.2 includes Firefox 88.0.1 , a brand new release (May 5, 2021). The browser is configured to use no disk cache and from what I experienced is stable, pretty fast and uses few resources. I tried hard to deplete the available RAM by visiting ad infested youtube sites but even then the free space didn't drop below 800MiB.

Give it a try. This distro looks promising.

[greengeek]

Stevie - any chance you could boot your original 64bit puppy setup and post the output of the following command? :

#free

Just to confirm the validity of the comments about swap.

Before changing to a different pup (which may well be a useful idea) could you try making a usb stick (maybe 4, 8 or 16Gb) that is formatted entirely as "Linux-swap", plugging it in and re-booting your original puppy with that stick installed then re-running the 'free' command and re-running your browser test?

(Even though usb is 'slow' it is a good simple test to add a swap partition this way and it may well get rid of the lockup - even though the system will not swap as fast as it would to HDD or SSD)

[stevie pup]

Well, there's plenty of food for thought there. So to recap on some of the suggestions and comments made so far - As for which browser I don't really have any preference, providing I can find whatever information I'm looking for I'm happy. I haven't had much time yet to try things out yet, but I did give 64 bit version of XenialPup a quick spin last night, and it did look promising. Hopefully I'll have time to do a lot more experimenting at the weekend. I also did the command #free, now how do I put the output in a post? I used to do screen snips on a regular basis in Windows, but I'm not sure how to go about it in Puppy.

Perhaps a little more background on how all this came about may be useful. I have two other laptops, both 64 bit with 4Gb RAM, and both with 15 inch screens. One is still running Windows 7, and the other is running Linux Mint, and I don't have any issues with either of them. So between them they cover virtually every eventuality, and I use these for all of my normal day to day things. What I wanted was something I could use to experiment and play around with, and not risk wrecking either of the other two. This little netbook came along (for next to nothing) so I got it. After a short while I came to the conclusion that running the latest version of Mint on such a low powered device probably wasn't a good idea, and I don't need Mint on two devices, so I thought Puppy would be an ideal alternative. So that's how I came to where I am now.

The more I delve into this, the more I'm thinking this issue is purely down to certain websites. I know there's nothing wrong with Puppy, and I've never had any problems with any of the included software. I've noticed how much the RAM usage shoots up when I go on Youtube, probably because Google regard ads and trackers as more important than the content. Some news websites I've found are just as bad.

I'll see what progress I can make over the weekend.

Thank you

[bigpup]

To copy in a terminal:
highlight what you want to copy
That is all.

To paste middle mouse button click.

In a forum post to paste.
Right click menu, select paste, it will paste to location of the input.
Middle mouse button click also works.

[mikeslr]

You posted that you were running Puppys live from a USB-Stick and asked if "installing a Puppy make things better". For now, perhaps try a middle road. When you shut-down, Puppy asks if you want to Save. If you select 'yes' you'll be walked thru the choices. Although the default location would be your USB-Stick, you could choose, instead, a hard-drive partition*. [Running from a Hard-drive is up to 15 times faster and less CPU intensive than from a USB-Stick]. If you select a Linux formatted partition, you'll then have a choice between a SaveFile and a SaveFolder. A SaveFolder starts small --just sufficient space to claim an existence-- but will expand as needed to whatever space is fully available on its partition. That partition can be that on which you already have installed Linux Mint or any other Linux. The other Linux will just ignore it (except, IIRC, when you backup the partition with something like Time-Shift). If you choose a non-Linux-formatted partition you won't have the SaveFolder choice and specify the size of the SaveFile. 1 Gb would be more than sufficient to start. Puppys have an application to resize (enlarge but not shrink) a SaveFile.

If you have a SaveFile or a SaveFolder there are several procedures for keeping things 'out of RAM'. In general, see this post which --although written for a different purpose-- spells them out, viewtopic.php?t=444. Any can be used even if you don't set your Save-Interval to zero. I'm not sure I mentioned there the use of SFSes. SFSes and AppImages are (more or less) self-contained applications. AppImages require no RAM when not in use. SFSes can be loaded when needed, unloaded when not. Unloaded, they require no RAM. Even loaded they require little RAM when not in use. And, as the cited posts spells out, you can set up your applications so that datafiles (the products of the work you do) are directly written to 'storage' and thus require no RAM.
The biggest RAM hogs are web-browsers. The post has a section dealing with them. You can slide down to the paragraph beginning "Web-browsers:". You should note that the post concurs with Mike Walsh's recommendation to use 'portables'. Even though Mike Walsh publishes most of the portable web-browsers, it wasn't a self-serving recommendation. By default portables locate web-cache within their own respective folders. If the portable is located adjacent to your SaveFile/Folder --on the hard-drive partition-- cache is never written to RAM.
The cited post also provides a technique for moving cache out of RAM if you choose not to use a portable. FYI, a graphic-rich webpage will easily 'cache' 100 Mbs of information to your computer. Open to several and your 1.7 Gbs of RAM can quickly be reduced to nothing; especially as just opening a Web-browser will require a couple hundred Mbs of RAM. Viewing videos will use even more.
There are Addon/Extensions available to most Web-browsers for manually deleting cache. But, of course, you then have to remember to do so.
If you want to try a 64-bit Puppy, let me recommend Xenialpup 7.5, viewtopic.php?p=578#p578. In general, its applications require less RAM than more recent Puppys. However, it contains sufficiently current 'infra-structure' to make use of current Web-browsers OOTB. And there are AppImages and SFSes which will work with Xenialpup64 for most of the activities people undertake.
--=-==-=-=--
* I not sure the Save GUI still asks if you want to copy it, but you can copy the puppy_XXX_NumberXXX.sfs to the partition where your SaveFile/Folder is/will be located. Then, on next boot-up, your USB-Stick will just function essentially as a boot-loader. XXX_NumberXXX is the specific name and version number of a particular Puppy, for example puppy_xenialpup64-7.5.sfs. You'll find such files on your USB-stick.

[stevie pup]

Well things didn't quite go to plan at the weekend and I didn't have as much time as I expected to experiment. For the time being I'm continuing to use Xenial pup 64, and so far it's looking good and hasn't frozen up (yet). I've got a week off in a month's time, so hopefully will be able to come back to all this then.

Thank you to everyone for the replies submitted.

[stevie pup]

I've tried a number of things since my last post, and ultimately decided that on this low powered device I will stick with 32 bit versions, whether it be Puppy or any other distro. I came across this while I was trying to sort a problem with another distro, but I expect the same thing would apply to any distro.

All I had open was a forum page on the net to enable me to follow some instructions, and the terminal. I was also monitoring system resources as I went along. That was it, no other apps were running. With the 32 bit version the RAM usage was around 530Mb. But when I did exactly the same thing with the 64 bit version the RAM usage went up to 970Mb, so almost a gig, and not far off double what 32 bit was using.

So with only 1.7Gb RAM to start with it's not difficult to see how something such as watching Youtube videos, with all the extra resources they take, is going to be a bit of a strain.

Besides, I've never had any problems with 32 bit versions of anything on this machine.

Thanks

[rcrsn51]

With the 32 bit version the RAM usage was around 530Mb. But when I did exactly the same thing with the 64 bit version the RAM usage went up to 970Mb

Were these the 32 and 64bit versions of the same OS? Or were they different OS's?

Were you using the same browser app in both cases?

[stevie pup]

Yes, same OS and same browser, on same machine. I also noted a similar variance in RAM usage when I was comparing 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Bionicpup, but didn't quote that example because I can't remember the exact details of what I was doing.

Might also be worthwhile pointing out that I've been having other problems with 64 bit distros (different problems, but problems all the same). Although it has a 64 bit processor this machine just doesn't appear to like 64 bit systems for some reason. My research has shown that there were a number of laptops/netbooks at the budget end of the scale that although had 64 bit processors were never really intended for 64 bit systems, and originally came with 32 bit Windows 7 or 8.

As I said previously, never had any problems whatsoever running 32 bit OS, and I've tried quite a few.

Thanks

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

That's the great thing about Puppy, y'see.....and this entire community.

Nobody's holding a gun to your head, and forcing you to run 64-bit. You run whatever suits the hardware.....and there's literally hundreds of Puppies out there, including tons of 're-spins' and re-masters various folks have put together over the years. Many choose to run older Puppies - they're safe enough, due to the way Pup runs, of course - specifically because they're re-purposing older machines, and, like so many of us here, don't like throwing stuff in the trash needlessly.

A fair number are like me; their main 'rig' is usually something pretty powerful by Puppy standards, but we also like to keep at least one or two old boxes going; sometimes because they're actually more suitable for the job at hand, ofttimes simply for nostalgia's sake. As is the case with my anciente Dell lappie; P4-powered, a gig-and-a-half of elderly, DDR1 RAM, and not far off its 19th birthday!

We bought it brand new in 2002, with XP pre-installed; horrendously underpowered (a dog-slow, NetBurst-gen single-core "Celery-stick" (Celeron)), 128 MB of RAM, and a wee, 20GB HDD. How it ran XP I'll never know, but it struggled along gamely, managing to do most things.....very S-L-O-W-L-Y. Following much hardware upgrading - it uses desktop CPUs, y'see, so has a replaceable CPU socket.....a Pentium 4 slotted in a treat - 2 GB RAM, and a 128 GB PATA/IDE-interface SSD from Transcend, it's actually not a bad Puppy box. It's still slow (P4s were never fast even when new!), but when you're 3 parts retired like I am, it doesn't matter if things take a wee bit longer.

The only snag, as you're aware of, is that 32-bit software is not much longer for this world; most developers are winding things down where it's concerned. Though to be fair, this is not so relevant in Pup's case; most apps are perhaps not much to look at, but they're functional.....and in the words of a British TV advert. they "do exactly what is said on the tin". If they work, why upgrade 'em?

The only things that DO need to be kept up-to-date, TBH, are browsers, and other internet-facing apps. But mostly browsers.

Mike.

[666philb]

@stevie pup As mentioned in my earlier post, the 64bit distros I tested so far leave little RAM on my Acer netbook. Heavy use of the browser can quickly fill this RAM, leading to system freeze.

I'm currently testing slacko64-8.2 on my Acer Aspire One 722.
Yes, this is a alpha release and some wrinkles still have to be ironed out, but none of the problems are serious and the distro works OOTB.

What is really outstanding: After boot (everything loaded into RAM) out of 1.3GiB "personal storage" I still have 850MiB "free space" left. That's a pretty good amount and gives the system enough room to breathe.

The second good news: Slacko64-8.2 includes Firefox 88.0.1 , a brand new release (May 5, 2021). The browser is configured to use no disk cache and from what I experienced is stable, pretty fast and uses few resources. I tried hard to deplete the available RAM by visiting ad infested youtube sites but even then the free space didn't drop below 800MiB.

Give it a try. This distro looks promising.

hi @MochiMoppel does your acer aspire one 722 have the c50 chip or the c60 chip?

[bigpup]

What is really outstanding: After boot (everything loaded into RAM) out of 1.3GiB "personal storage" I still have 850MiB "free space" left. That's a pretty good amount and gives the system enough room to breathe.

That free space is not amount of free RAM.
That is free space in the save file/folder, which is the personal storage.

[MochiMoppel]

@666philb C50 (Aspire one 722-N52C/B)
@bigpup It is RAM. I don't use a save file/folder and when booting a pristine distro there isn't yet a save file/folder anyway.

[bigpup]

@bigpup It is RAM. I don't use a save file/folder and when booting a pristine distro there isn't yet a save file/folder anyway.

OK, now that I know you are only using a save ramdisk.