Recently I came across Lunduke post about some mysterious Vendefoul Wolf Linux distribution that uses 217 MB RAM with Devuan as base (no systemd(1) here) and XLibre X11 server along with IceWM window manager. For the record - the Lunduke post states 200 MB RAM but XLibreDev quotes a post where exactly 217 MB RAM…

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A detailed walkthrough of configuring FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE with XLibre X11 server, Openbox window manager, and minimal tooling to achieve a functional desktop environment using only 206 MB of RAM (or 134 MB with memory constraints). Covers installation choices, system configuration files, package selection, and provides performance comparisons with other desktop environments. Demonstrates that with careful tuning of kernel parameters, filesystem choices (UFS with soft updates journaling), and minimal daemon configuration, FreeBSD can match or beat lightweight Linux distributions in memory efficiency.

200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop