See resource usage and performance stats of DietPi images, and compare those against other Debian-based distributions.
+See resource usage and performance stats of DietPi images, compared to Debian-based lite/minimal/server images of other projects.
Furthermore, the OS images provided by other projects does not say much about the project itself. Others focus more on own build systems, kernel development, and/or hardware. We maintain own kernel sources only for a small number of SBCs, and otherwise rely on and benefit from kernel development done by other projects. Instead, we focus on userland development, our large library of ready-to-use software options, automated setups and lightweight base images.
We do believe in the benefits of shipping minimal base images, allowing a better overview of installed packages and available features, less disk I/O on APT upgrades, installing additional packages only on demand. However, this may not be important for everyone, and some may prefer to have more packages/features pre-installed, hence less need to install things afterwards. This is hence not a question of better/worse, but one of personal priorities and preferences, for the own Linux system use case.
Further details about the compared values, though with outdated results, can be found in our blog post.
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Raspberry Pi OS [%] | Raspberry Pi OS |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 32 MiB | 36% | 90 MiB |
| Boot duration | 22.405s | 49% | 45.650s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Optional | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | edit required | |
| Download size | 209 MiB | 44% | 474 MiB |
| Image size | 896 MiB | 37% | 2424 MiB |
| Build date | 2024-05-13 | 2024-03-15 |
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Raspberry Pi OS [%] | Raspberry Pi OS |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 118 MiB | 67% | 177 MiB |
| Boot duration | 6.220s | 46% | 13.497s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Optional | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | edit required | |
| Download size | 178 MiB | 43% | 414 MiB |
| Image size | 1024 MiB | 39% | 2640 MiB |
| Build date | 2024-05-13 | 2024-03-15 |
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Armbian [%] | Armbian |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 60Mi | 63% | 96Mi |
| Running processes | 11 | 44% | 25 |
| Disk usage | 580 MiB | 42% | 1379 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 225 | 48% | 466 |
| Boot duration | 16.732s | 95% | 17.546s |
| Temporary files in RAM | Yes | Yes | |
| Logs in RAM | Yes | No | |
| RAM usage | 120 MiB | 80% | 150 MiB |
| Running processes | 9 | 47% | 19 |
| Disk usage | 655 MiB | 64% | 1021 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 210 | 65% | 324 |
| Boot duration | 11.785s | 63% | 18.854s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) | |
| Logs files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | compressed RAM disk (zram) | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Yes | |
| Download size | 132.148.481 bytes | 34% | 389.250.660 bytes |
| Image size | 800.428.032 bytes | 42% | 1.883.242.496 bytes |
| Build date | 2021-04-02 | 2021-05-07 | |
| Download size | 190 MiB | 67% | 285 MiB |
| Image size | 769 MiB | 67% | 1140 MiB |
| Build date | 2024-05-13 | 2024-05-24 |