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Chrome is notable for being a memory hog; older devices, almost by definition, do not come with modern amounts of memory. I wonder what the performance is going

Chrome is notable for being a memory hog; older devices, almost by definition, do not come with modern amounts of memory. I wonder what the performance is going to be like. Also, I question how well optimized Chrome OS can be for PC substrates. It's one thing to run Chrome OS on a device built around what Chrome OS supports; Chromebooks are essentially the Mac hardware model: limited hardware that is known to be compatible with the software running on it. In the wild, though, PCs have a mind-boggling array of different hardware; I wonder how well Chrome OS is going to adapt to that Wild West.

jklinger410 5y ago
Don't they just use the linux kernel for hardware?
- simonmales 5y ago
  I wonder how this will help get drivers mainlined. And if OEMs will start offering Chrome OS Flex devices off the shelf.
_ea1k 5y ago
Chromebooks often come with ~4GB and run pretty well. I think they are just relying on Linux having relatively broad hardware support along with proprietary drivers for the most common video chipsets. I doubt it will be exceptionally hard, given that Chrome OS tends to have relatively limited support for peripherals anyway. Its not like they have to support high performance 3d gaming.
bduerst 5y ago
>Chrome is notable for being a memory hog This meme comes from a misunderstanding of how desktop memory works. Chrome will use as much available RAM as you can give it in order to improve web performance, but it doesn't actually require that much to run.
- redwall_hp 5y ago
  And...modern web cruft is a memory hog. Chrome's built in task manager shows the tab I'm writing this comment in as using a reasonable 50MB of memory. Meanwhile, I have a couple of YouTube tabs that are over 200MB each. The problem is the world doesn't hold web developers responsible for being wasteful.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    The entirety of the HN Add Comment page is 82 lines of HTML (that's after pretty-printing it!) - two tables, and a form with a text area. The only image is the logo. Granted, there's also 175 lines of CSS linked from that, and 150 lines of JS (which does not use any libraries or frameworks). How did we get to the point where 50 Mb to maintain this document structured in memory and ready to render is considered reasonable?
    - bduerst 5y ago
      I mean, the answer is pretty obvious. HN itself isn't a business, it's an organization's forum for a different type of revenue stream. You could argue that the entire internet (or all media, for that matter) should be run that way, but then we'd still lose a lot of functionality and creativity, even if it were generated for-profit.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        I'm not holding HN up as a stellar example. I'm asking why we need 50 Mb of RAM to render a webpage that is this simple. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that browsers could handle back when the average size of the entire RAM was less than that.

jklinger410 5y ago

Don't they just use the linux kernel for hardware?

simonmales 5y ago
I wonder how this will help get drivers mainlined. And if OEMs will start offering Chrome OS Flex devices off the shelf.

_ea1k 5y ago

Chromebooks often come with ~4GB and run pretty well. I think they are just relying on Linux having relatively broad hardware support along with proprietary drivers for the most common video chipsets. I doubt it will be exceptionally hard, given that Chrome OS tends to have relatively limited support for peripherals anyway. Its not like they have to support high performance 3d gaming.

bduerst 5y ago

>Chrome is notable for being a memory hog This meme comes from a misunderstanding of how desktop memory works. Chrome will use as much available RAM as you can give it in order to improve web performance, but it doesn't actually require that much to run.

redwall_hp 5y ago
And...modern web cruft is a memory hog. Chrome's built in task manager shows the tab I'm writing this comment in as using a reasonable 50MB of memory. Meanwhile, I have a couple of YouTube tabs that are over 200MB each. The problem is the world doesn't hold web developers responsible for being wasteful.
- int_19h 5y ago
  The entirety of the HN Add Comment page is 82 lines of HTML (that's after pretty-printing it!) - two tables, and a form with a text area. The only image is the logo. Granted, there's also 175 lines of CSS linked from that, and 150 lines of JS (which does not use any libraries or frameworks). How did we get to the point where 50 Mb to maintain this document structured in memory and ready to render is considered reasonable?
  - bduerst 5y ago
    I mean, the answer is pretty obvious. HN itself isn't a business, it's an organization's forum for a different type of revenue stream. You could argue that the entire internet (or all media, for that matter) should be run that way, but then we'd still lose a lot of functionality and creativity, even if it were generated for-profit.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      I'm not holding HN up as a stellar example. I'm asking why we need 50 Mb of RAM to render a webpage that is this simple. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that browsers could handle back when the average size of the entire RAM was less than that.