DietPi OS stats & comparison
See resource usage and performance stats of DietPi images, compared to Debian-based lite/minimal/server images of other projects.
Note: This does not say that DietPi is better than other distributions, it does say that DietPi base images are lighter, being one of our major goals.
Furthermore, the OS images provided by other projects do 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 catalogue 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Further details about the compared values, though with outdated results, can be found in our blog post.
Commands to derive data
You may also run our comparison script to test and print the values right on your system.
| Stat | Command |
|---|---|
| Disk usage | findmnt -Ufnrbo USED / # + /boot + /boot/efi + /boot/firmware |
| RAM usage | free -tm | mawk 'END {print $3" MiB"}' |
| Pre-installed packages | dpkg --get-selections | wc -l |
| Running processes | echo $(( $(pstree -Ta | wc -l) - 3 )) |
| Boot duration | systemd-analyze | mawk '{print $(NF-1)" "$NF;exit}' |
| Temporary files | findmnt -Ufnro SOURCE /tmp |
| Log files | findmnt -Ufnro SOURCE /var/log |
| SSH pre-installed | ss -tlpn 'sport 22' |
Raspberry Pi Zero W
Trixie-based 32-bit images tested on 2026-03-31
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Raspberry Pi OS Lite [%] | Raspberry Pi OS Lite |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 42 MiB | 44% | 96 MiB |
| Running processes | 9 | 38% | 24 |
| Disk usage | 702 MiB | 30% | 2378 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 215 | 32% | 664 |
| Boot duration | 27.834s | 22% | 125.217s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) | |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | edit required | |
| Download size | 178 MiB | 36% | 497 MiB |
| Image size | 1024 MiB | 40% | 2568 MiB |
| Build date | 2026-03-31 | 2025-12-04 |
Raspberry Pi 5
Trixie-based 64-bit images tested on 2026-04-02
| Stat | DietPi | Armbian minimal | Raspberry Pi OS Lite |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 152 MiB | 186 MiB | 240 MiB |
| Running processes | 9 | 21 | 24 |
| Disk usage | 894 MiB | 1148 MiB | 2639 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 251 | 315 | 658 |
| Boot duration | 2.768s | 5.224s | 15.836s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs)) | Compressed RAM disk (zram | rootfs |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Yes | edit required |
| Download size | 183 MiB | 213 MiB | 487 MiB |
| Image size | 1095 MiB | 1832 MiB | 2848 MiB |
| Build date | 2026-03-31 | 2026-02-09 | 2025-12-04 |
Odroid XU4
Trixie/Noble-based images tested on 2026-04-02
| Stat | DietPi | Hardkernel Ubuntu minimal | Armbian minimal |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 110 MiB | 141 MiB | 153 MiB |
| Running processes | 8 | 20 | 19 |
| Disk usage | 642 MiB | 2380 MiB | 1320 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 197 | 482 | 293 |
| Boot duration | 9.521s | 25.123s | 16.180s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | RAM disk (tmpfs) |
| Logs files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | compressed RAM disk (zram) |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Download size | 197 MiB | 733 MiB | 240 MiB |
| Image size | 705 MiB | 2406 MiB | 1112 MiB |
| Build date | 2026-03-30 | 2024-09-11 | 2026-02-03 |
NanoPi R76S
Trixie-based images tested on 2026-06-28
| Stat | DietPi | FriendlyELEC Debian Core | Armbian minimal |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 296 MiB | 425 MiB | 376 MiB |
| Running processes | 9 | 23 | 20 |
| Disk usage | 630 MiB | 784 MiB | 1475 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 196 | 552 | 297 |
| Boot duration | 10.148s | 7.448s | 9.308s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) | RAM disk (tmpfs) |
| Logs files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | compressed RAM disk (zram) |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Download size | 180 MiB721 MiB | 63% | 280 MiB |
| Image size | 785 MiB7430 MiB | 71% | 1632 MiB |
| Build date | 2026-06-15 | 2026-04-03 | 2026-05-29 |
DietPi vs Debian (netinst CD)
Bookworm on x86_64 UEFI PC at 2024-05-31
These images are hard to compare. Debian does not offer a server live image. Closest to compare is the Debian network installer CD ISO image, with the DietPi UEFI installer image. The Debian installer debootstraps a fresh Debian onto the target drive, which requires a lot of pre-configuration, manual formatting, and makes use of network access for additional and/or updated packages. The DietPi installer comes with a complete embedded DietPi live image, which does not need any pre-configuration. However, opposed to Debian, DietPi does updates and initial configuration on first boot and login.
In the Debian installer, everything was de-selected, but the SSH server and common system utilities, which is closest to what DietPi images ship with.
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Debian [%] | Debian |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 296 MiB | 83% | 357 MiB |
| Running processes | 9 | 53% | 17 |
| Disk usage | 1055 MiB | 59% | 1787 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 237 | 66% | 357 |
| Boot duration | 7.425s | 107% | 6.967s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | selection required | |
| Download size | 650 MiB | 103% | 629 MiB |
| ISO size | 677 MiB | 108% | 629 MiB |
| Build date | 2024-05-13 | 2024-02-10 |
DietPi vs Debian (QEMU qcow2)
Bookworm on x86_64 VM at 2024-05-30
Tests were performed on a VirtualBox DietPi VM host with nested AMD-V, using qemu-system-x86_64.
The Debian local QEMU virtual machine image in qcow2 format was compared to the DietPi Proxmox image, which is in qcow2 format as well. We could have taken our generic VM image and compare it with the xz-compressed raw image of Debian, which is however not prominently listed on their download page. The content of all those images is identical, hence relevant is only that the disk format is the same.
| Stat | DietPi | DietPi/Debian [%] | Debian |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM usage | 165 MiB | 87% | 190 MiB |
| Running processes | 8 | 57% | 14 |
| Disk usage | 734 MiB | 63% | 1156 MiB |
| Pre-installed packages | 209 | 74% | 283 |
| Boot duration | 7.286s | 72% | 10.072s |
| Temporary files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| Log files | RAM disk (tmpfs) | rootfs | |
| SSH pre-installed | Yes | No | |
| Download size | 227 MiB | 58% | 394 MiB |
| Image size | 242 MiB | 61% | 394 MiB |
| Build date | 2024-05-13 | 2024-05-07 |
