3.97MiB used. Htop appears to be using around 1.5, so actual shell running neofetch may be just under 2.5MB???

Current lowest ever bookworm / LMDE 6 mate desktop memory usage is 32.5M

Then again, RAM is cheap these days. So long as it's being used to good purpose, there's little sense in fussing over numbers.

Anyway, it was the best compromise I could get between "an optional GUI" and "default console" and "as many features as humanly possible."

Hell yeah.

Desktop - 47 MB

Desktop, music player, networking, taskbar ~ 100 MB

Which desktop?

Desktop - 47 MB

Desktop, music player, networking, taskbar ~ 100 MB

Someone have booted the system manually by hand one by one with only 9MB. And it wasn't the 70's or 80's but 2016 LoL.

Currently 70MB - Devuan GNU/Linux 4 (chimaera/ceres) - CWM, GTK3, kernel latest from testing, xorg as a user etc...
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/510 … 53e2_o.png
I can't approximate the 1rst ones due to nature of changes it has undergone Debian/Devuan ~ kernel, GTK GUI and other services or apps from "Jessie to chimaera/ceres 2012-2019". I may reduce to 50MB if i untick some services or change the way of shell or drop sudo, conky, smartctl, but i'm not going to do now.
P.S. If anyone needs A CWM config let me know.

The most unwanted service is dbus, i really don't want it and can't let it go without taking with it many apps i use

[sudo] password for nili: 
root@tokia:/home/nili# apt-get purge dbus
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  adwaita-icon-theme geany-common glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gtk-update-icon-cache libapparmor1 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatkmm-1.6-1v5 libatspi2.0-0
  libcairomm-1.0-1v5 libcolord2 libdbusmenu-glib4 libdbusmenu-gtk3-4 libdconf1 libevent-2.1-7 libffmpegthumbnailer4v5 libglibmm-2.4-1v5 libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjson-glib-1.0-common libminiupnpc17 libnatpmp1
  libpangomm-1.4-1v5 libpcrecpp0v5 libproxy1v5 libsigc++-2.0-0v5 smartmontools spacefm-common transmission-common
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  dbus* dbus-x11* dconf-gsettings-backend* dconf-service* elogind* geany* glib-networking* gsettings-desktop-schemas* gsmartcontrol* libayatana-appindicator3-1* libayatana-ido3-0.4-0*
  libayatana-indicator3-7* libgtk-3-0* libgtk-3-common* libgtkmm-3.0-1v5* libpam-elogind* librest-0.7-0* libsoup-gnome2.4-1* libsoup2.4-1* spacefm-gtk3* transmission-gtk*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 21 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 64.2 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

I may hit Y, i may do replacements of geany >vim, transmission > rtorrent, libgtk-3-* >libgtk-2-*, spacefm >nnn or compiling spacefm without dbus, gsmartcontrol >smartctl and purge that thing. I may do it, but all the GUI(s) from GTK3 apps i want em used, so i'm **** up with Dbus this time and i have no time to mess with it, despite not like it at all, and eating me 10MB from startup due to elogind+others.

I killed (purged) "at-spi2-core" with her two services, so i regained 10MB of DBUS.
I put the below no-at-bridge to .profile of user to ignore her warning, anyway i got complain of at-bridge on root, Im live with that warn down there.

# Fix this warn ---> AT-SPI: Error retrieving accessibility bus address: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.a11y.Bus was not provided by any .service files <--- for GTK3
# Package: at-spi2-core
export NO_AT_BRIDGE=1

Fighting Dbus i find not very easy task to do, i may step back to GTK2 and i know how to kill it once and for all, but I will not go down there anymore. So 70MB for me on chimaera/ceres.

Regards!

By the way, i tinkered Alpine Linux many times with 40MB, have no scrot to prove it. BUT I DID IT!

My openbsd machine boots up to about 80 MB using the same/similar setup.

IMHO it depends on what you consider "basic".

IMHO Basic isnt about what software you need to run. I'm sure Landor means about the minimum needed to run DE or WM.
For instance.....

I have a laptop with first gen i3 and 4 gig ram. Stock Mint 19.3 XFCE runs at about 360mb. I can get it with office suite and browser installed, idles at 250-290mb with minor tweaks. With the wordprocessor and firefox open runs at about 800-1000mb.

I get similar numbers with Devuan Beowulf Beta clean install on the same machine.
Unless they're open browser and office software installs add nothing to fresh boot idle load.

Whereas Mint 19.3 Cinnamon clean install idles I seem to recall at about 700-800mb, I get similar numbers too with Kubuntu.

Miyolinux-EXTRA ASCII 2018 2nd edition which is openbox with xfce panel and whisker menu, with my own minor interface tweaks but no additional software installed idles at 170mb, stock is about 185-190mb.
Note one can also choose lxpanel and menu or straight openbox and menu.

Miyolinux JWM based on Beowulf beta live running on usb idles at 145mb
Miyolinux ICEWM based on Beowulf beta running live usb idles at 165mb

EDIT: I think that system was running openrc-init as PID1 instead of busybox.

lowest memory footprint/usage any of you has been able to obtain with a WM and what was your wm/basic setup.

IMHO it depends on what you consider "basic". I've experience installing general use computers in high school computer labs. We need browsing and office programs at a minimum. My Debian and Devuan installs with KDE take about 4GB of disc and run with just 1 GB. Latest Devuan 3 system require more RAM to be responsive, may be about 2 GB, but this figure is still untested personally.

Hope it helps.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Landor