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I started toying with linux distros around 2012 and even then I didn't understand the "lightweight" aspect. 8GB is an incredible amount of memory to run a deskt
by ttymck 3y ago
I started toying with linux distros around 2012 and even then I didn't understand the "lightweight" aspect. 8GB is an incredible amount of memory to run a desktop environment.
Do you usually have Chrome open? Won't that dominate the memory usage? Will a different desktop environment fix that?
- warner25 3y agoI agree with this assessment. First of all, the distro doesn't matter much, because you can get almost any desktop environment for almost any distro. I doubt there's much difference, in terms of resource usage, between Mint with Cinnamon or Xfce vs. Ubuntu Cinnamon or Xubuntu. Second, all of the major Linux desktop environments use about 1 GB of memory after booting up, before launching any applications. Historically, maybe it was true that Xfce was much more lightweight than GNOME, for example, but it looks like a pretty level playing field these days. And that's probably because, in the end, you're mostly going to run Firefox or Chrome to run a bunch of modern, heavyweight web apps. Even if you just use a window manager without a full desktop environment, I don't think you can move the needle much. You still need to be able to run a modern, heavyweight browser. Third, even Windows 10 runs fine on 8 GB of memory. My wife's laptop does it all day, no problem.