I would just like to ask if the minimum H/W requirements necessary to install one of the packages presented on the Download page might be found. I see the obviously placed notation in the top middle of the download page where it states 2GB memory and 30GB file as a minimum however I suspect that may not be applicable to all packages.
If that note is considered accurate I have further work to do before I seek technical assistance to resolve my issue which has me reaching out here to verify the 2GB and 30GB requirements accuracy. I had attempted to install Manjaro-KDE on a laptop with only 2GB memory and after running down the reason behind the various failures it seems Calamares runs out of memory and gets killed. I tried the KDE-minimal and the XFCE packages with the same results. I also tried in a Virt-manager VM with the same results.
At any rate I thought I would confirm if the 2GB memory, 30GB file are firm statistics and if not to ask where I might find a more detailed source as I have not located anyplace but the Download page. I just didn’t want to waste a lot of time chasing something that wouldn’t be an issue if the actually minimums are met…
Thank You
Dee
I don’t know the answer to your main question, but you could try mounting some swap in the live environment before running Calamares. If it works then, that means that Calamares in the live environment needs more than 2GB, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that Manjaro needs more than 2GB.
Regardless, I don’t really recommend using KDE on 2GB even if you can, stick with XFCE or a window manager.
Even though I am pro-Manjaro, but with only 2GB RAM, I’d suggest an ultra-light distro, like Puppy Linux or Slax, or maybe one the community editions of Manjaro might be lightweight enough to work with such limited RAM, but I haven’t tried any of them. In any event, running any web browser is going to cause problems if there isn’t lots of swap.
2 gigs is more than enough for all basic use, i even ran a Bitcoin & lightning node on my pinephone with that amount of memory, with memory left over for very light use. A 2GB PC with a fast SSD holding SWAP should work without any issues for a majority of people and their computer use habits.
Honestly, calamares is an abomination if it cannot make an install with 2 gigs of ram available. In another thread i read that some user’s crashing issue during install with latest install media was due to “the new slideshow feature of calamares”
I appreciate your request for logs which I assume to be an offer to help in debugging the problem. However it seems to me that without knowing what the minimum requirements are it cannot be known if there a problem even exists. If the requirements briefly eluded to on the download page are in fact correct then there would be a problem and perhaps worth the effort to discover what is the source of the problem. For now I simply just want to find out where I might find the statistics on the requirements, which I would suspect, but not necessarily, to be different dependent on which package is used. It is more likely I’ve simple over looked where the information is or it’s as simple as stated on the download page and if so no reason to spend a lot of time trying to “fix” what isn’t broken. Which is why I didn’t provide the proper information to debug anything in the 1st place, I just want to confirm I haven’t done something silly like overlooking the obvious and waste people time and energy on a problem which isn’t a problem at all.
I thank you though.
Thank you for the tip on adding swap. I sort of cheated on that test in that I did installs of the KDE and XFCE packages on VMs with the 2GB memory allotment and both cases Calamares die for lack of memory but when I bump the memory up on the VM the install has no issues. So I thought a confirmation I had the requirement correct and if so then my brother in law can buy some memory if he want to try Linux out.
On the KDE vs XFCE, I had always thought KDE would be on the heavy side but I had recently read KDE had made a lot of progress on being a resource hog bringing it more in line with leaner options. Something interesting to note is that performance wise XFCE appears to be significantly faster that KDE on the test VM’s. I wasn’t surprised at a difference but the amount of difference is “visually” HUGE. So I believe my brother in law is going to get XFCE so Linux can put a good foot forward… something which I’ll need since he’s going to call me out on the fact I bragged about Linux can do anything Widows can do plus much more… he will definitely pick up that Windows can be installed on a 2GB system and, at least in this case, Linux cannot. We know Linux can go on some really weak HW and do great… his perception will surely blind him to the many options available to us. Though to tell the truth is really is odd a minimum system can’t be installed, at least to a level which booted in the first place to do the install. Hmmm… so maybe the specs on the download page are accurate and their is another issue… but to have that on a VM and hardware seems unlikely…but isn’t everyday you find something Windows can do that Linux can’t… Yea I have to be missing something… But hey thank you for the response and idea.
This is not a direct answer to your question but it may help bypass the Calamares problem. Since Manjaro is based on ArchLinux, you can install Arch using it’s guided, non-graphical installer https://youtu.be/VSOshZiUkl0 and then install the desired desktop environment manually
