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> But there are distros out there that can run easily in as little as 1G RAM

It always make me chuckle when I hear this. Default server (ie no GUI at all) installation of a RHEL derivative just outright dies silently with 1GB of RAM if there is no swap. Sure with the enabled swap it no longer dies but to say what the performance is anywhere performant is to lie to yourself.

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RHEL is not the be-all end-all of minimalist linux, even sans GUI. Puppy Linux, with a full WM, is completely usable with a single gig of ram. That's obviously a different use-case from RHEL but the point stands.

If the point is the minimal footprint then MS-DOS would win. Now install and run at least 70% of the software available even without EPEL in Puppy?

RHEL/RHEL-like, just like Ubuntu is thevgeneral purpose distroes and the point of the minimal sysrq for running is for them, not for the excercises in the RAM golfing.

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