From: robin_listas@es.invalid   
      
   On 2026-02-09 13:11, Paul wrote:   
   > On Sun, 2/8/2026 4:14 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:   
   >> On 2026-02-08 21:45, Graham J wrote:   
   >>> Graham J wrote:   
      
   >>> What is wrong with the Mint installer?  Is it incomplete?   
   >>   
   >> The installers have a minimum memory requirement to run, to; it should be   
   >> somewhere in the documentation. And the messages they give can be   
   misleading.   
   >   
   > You did put the necessary information in your first post, and I   
   > must have scrolled too quickly on that one. That's the reason   
   > initrd can't unpack, is it's a resource issue. Not enough RAM to   
   > unpack initrd.   
      
   Some installers can make use of a preexisting swap partition. On some   
   you can open a terminal and activate it.   
      
   >   
   > The TinyCore Linux will run there (the 1GB machine).   
   >   
   > But that's going to be more than a bit of a challenge for   
   > the fancy-graphics distributions.   
      
   I understand he did manage to install Damn Small Linux.   
      
   >   
   > I would recommend 3GB of RAM, as a passport to sampling the Linux Map.   
   >   
   >     https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_   
   istribution_Timeline.svg   
   >   
   > There are some low-resource distributions. But then it's a question of how   
   > their package management works, as to how pleasant they would be to use.   
   > Like with the TinyCore, the OS doesn't need much, but when Firefox is   
   > loaded, that could quickly chomp into the available RAM. By using a swap   
   partition,   
   > that can help with a low RAM situation, but with slow swap devices, that can   
   be   
   > annoyingly slow.   
      
   And modern Linux fragments swap, a rotating rust disk is slow as   
   molasses. SSD is acceptable.   
      
   I remember that when I updated some release of openSUSE to the next,   
   swap suddenly became very slow. I could hear the disk trashing. Then I   
   migrated to an SSD and things were acceptable. That machine had 8GiB ram.   
      
   ...   
      
   --   
   Cheers,   
           Carlos E.R.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)