Eh, 1G is pretty limited. I'd want at least 4G. Yes, 1G is workable (I could do most webdev on a Raspberry Pi), but a desktop environment and a browser running

Eh, 1G is pretty limited. I'd want at least 4G. Yes, 1G is workable (I could do most webdev on a Raspberry Pi), but a desktop environment and a browser running one tab uses half of that, and each tab would increase that usage. The 4G isn't for building or running code, it's for tons of browser tabs open with documentation. I routinely have >10 tabs open, and that's quite likely to cause swapping on 1G RAM. Sure, I could slim everything down by running a tiling window manager instead of a desktop environment or configuring my browser to unload older tabs (or close and reopen with bookmarks), but that takes extra time, and if time is money, that money is better spent on a few extra gigs of RAM.