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How it is even possible to run Linux only with 8MB of RAM? In the article it's Ubuntu, it's the distro what I use on my Dell i7 gen. 3 laptop.

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The wording is confusing. They used an Ubuntu build system to run this script, which produces the firmware file to be flashed to the ESP32. The firmware is a minimal Linux-based OS, not Ubuntu.

https://gist.github.com/jcmvbkbc/316e6da728021c8ff670a24e674...

It just runs the kernel and one CLI app, maybe two. No ui, no swap.

It is the same kind of rootfs your laptop runs, but the similarities end there.

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