5 ms·

Using a reasonable OS (Linux etc), 4GB is absolutely fine for browsing and basic tasks, and indeed is often fine for development and other more-than-basic tasks

Using a reasonable OS (Linux etc), 4GB is absolutely fine for browsing and basic tasks, and indeed is often fine for development and other more-than-basic tasks as well, depending on how exactly you work (Emacs/Vim instead of an IDE, for instance). Is 4GB considered too little under Windows these days?

nicoburns 7y ago
More or less. The main culprit is web browsers. Chrome will happily use 4gb by itself these days...
- overcast 7y ago
  The Great Suspender is life.
- kop316 7y ago
  Heh, Firefox doesn't have that problem at all. I don't think I have pulled more than 1 GB on it? But then again I usually only have 10-20 tabs open at the most.
qubex 7y ago
It amazes me no end that when I turned 18 I was contracted to work on a Cray J90 with a staggering 128 Mwords of RAM at a financial institution, and that today 4GB is considered tight for running a consumer OS with a browser with more than a few tabs open. I really cannot fathom what could possibly require so much memory. It’s just taking some hypertext markup, some scripts, and rendering a web-page. I genuinely do not understand. I’m totally baffled.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Abstraction upon abstraction running containers inside VMs, basically turtles all the way down.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  and I think back to the old B6700 ... for which we bought 1.5Mb of core (yes, actual hand threaded core) for $1M in the late 70s ..... it supported 40 terminals
zozbot234 7y ago
4GB is terrible under Windows 10 (you'll be swapping all the time, which means either visibly thrashing if running a spinning disk, or wearing out a SSD with excess writes). 8GB is considered a mildly tolerable amount, and 16GB is almost the standard for "real" use. Yet under Linux, even as little as 2GB can make for an incredibly snappy and productive experience. Go figure.

5 ms·

Using a reasonable OS (Linux etc), 4GB is absolutely fine for browsing and basic tasks, and indeed is often fine for development and other more-than-basic tasks

by snogglethorpe 7y ago

nicoburns 7y ago
More or less. The main culprit is web browsers. Chrome will happily use 4gb by itself these days...
- overcast 7y ago
  The Great Suspender is life.
- kop316 7y ago
  Heh, Firefox doesn't have that problem at all. I don't think I have pulled more than 1 GB on it? But then again I usually only have 10-20 tabs open at the most.
qubex 7y ago
It amazes me no end that when I turned 18 I was contracted to work on a Cray J90 with a staggering 128 Mwords of RAM at a financial institution, and that today 4GB is considered tight for running a consumer OS with a browser with more than a few tabs open. I really cannot fathom what could possibly require so much memory. It’s just taking some hypertext markup, some scripts, and rendering a web-page. I genuinely do not understand. I’m totally baffled.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Abstraction upon abstraction running containers inside VMs, basically turtles all the way down.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  and I think back to the old B6700 ... for which we bought 1.5Mb of core (yes, actual hand threaded core) for $1M in the late 70s ..... it supported 40 terminals
zozbot234 7y ago
4GB is terrible under Windows 10 (you'll be swapping all the time, which means either visibly thrashing if running a spinning disk, or wearing out a SSD with excess writes). 8GB is considered a mildly tolerable amount, and 16GB is almost the standard for "real" use. Yet under Linux, even as little as 2GB can make for an incredibly snappy and productive experience. Go figure.