Problem with installing Linux on your system.
Problem with installing Linux on your system.
Avoid starting the kernel because it requires 248MB according to virtualbox. The desktop functions at 256MB, but opening Firefox would be extremely slow. Even 512MB is sufficient for a single tab. 1GB is more than enough, as shown by a podcast host who used only 1.1GB with five programs running. For LXDE, 1GB works well. Cinnamon desktop uses quite a bit (over 850MB when installed), while Mate desktop is lighter, coming from Linux Mint. XFCE is even more minimal. I suggest using gparted to create a swap partition. Most setups don’t include partition managers, and those that do often restrict new partitions. KDE and gparted are the only ones I know that let you do this. In gparted, you can make a 2-4GB Linux swap partition at the end of the device. By default, swapping uses 60% of memory; lowering it to around 10% helps. You can adjust it with sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10 and verify changes by checking /proc/sys/vm/swappiness. Test performance with different values.
I was taken aback last week when someone mentioned LMDE still supports a 32bit version. Indeed, I installed LMDE 32bit on a netbook with just 1GB of RAM and it functioned properly. However, I haven’t used it extensively. I anticipate that opening Firefox and attempting tasks would be very slow, even with an SSD. As you noted, 1GB seems insufficient for a full installation, though perhaps not enough for a basic setup. Once applications are running... 32bit builds might be impractical. It’s helpful to have them for older hardware, but our project aims for systems with at least Core i3 processors and ideally 8GB, sometimes even 4GB. A few users can manage with 1GB, but they usually stick to terminal environments. Regarding the key recovery, you might want to try a different tool like Balena Etcher—here’s the link: https://etcher.balena.io/ I typically use Etcher on Linux, but I’m not always on that system.