4 ms·

There is more to size than storage space. Larger applications take more memory, more cpu caches; things spill over to normal memory, latencies grow and everythi

There is more to size than storage space. Larger applications take more memory, more cpu caches; things spill over to normal memory, latencies grow and everything runs much slower

michaelmrose 1y ago
For practical purposes given more than enough RAM and fast storage there is no meaningful user discernible performance differences between a 500Mb OS and a 30GB OS. Whereas very small linux distros are useful in several areas like containers and limited hardware running such on the desktop is an objectively worse experience and is moreso a minimalism fetish than a useful strategy.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  There is never actually enough RAM and fast storage.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    There is enough that for most consumer use cases micro optimization only make sense in the context of poverty.
    - datadrivenangel 1y ago
      One of my work laptops with 16GB of Ram struggles to open a few spreadsheets and browser tabs because of bloat.
      - michaelmrose 1y ago
        Either install more RAM or install a better OS
- RetroTechie 1y ago
  > (..) there is no meaningful user discernible performance differences between a 500Mb OS and a 30GB OS. I call BS. A small single board computer I have, came with 8 GB of RAM. Not esoecially big or small. 500 MB would fit into this, comfortably. Leaving ~7.5GB for apps. Load everything into RAM once, run from there. RAM bandwith is ~8.5GB/s. 30 GB wouldn't fit. So: swap everything in & out using a (cheapish) SSD over a x1 PCIe lane. Or (more common) from an SD card / eMMC module. Think ~100 MB/s on a good day. That's with apps competing for the memory crumbs left. That's a ~85x factor difference. 2 orders of magnitude. Yes users would notice. Sure, developer with fully decked out system doesn't see this. Or even understand it. But: Size matters. Note: smartphones, tablets etc are not unlike that SBC. And flash storage tends to be on the low-end side where speed is concerned. Desktop you say? Nope, smartphones & tablets are where it's at these days.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    Intelligently swapping stuff from storage to RAM is literally how most OS on earth have worked for a while because as long as you have enough to keep what is liable to be used soon in RAM performance can trivially be excellent. Libreoffice on my system spends 99.9% of the time consuming only 650MB of storage. Opening an office doc makes it require about 165MB of RAM. The consequence of it being swapped out at some point is that it takes slightly longer to get started the next time on the order of an additional 0.6 seconds. If you watched me and the computer whilst I completed a 15 minute task with office you would note that the computer spent most of its time waiting on me rather than the other way around. It would start 0.6 seconds faster but it wouldn't get done meaningfully faster. It would be 6 100ths of 1% faster rather than being "two orders of magnitude faster" Worse if I really want faster libreoffice I can just start that at boot and thereafter create new writer windows in ms I wouldn't be obliged to run my entire OS from RAM to achieve this goal. Virtually nobody runs standard desktop linux on smartphones or tablets. Distro's that target desktops and laptops should not reduce their fitness wherein they are actually used in order to be better suited for environments in which they are not.
    - RetroTechie 1y ago
      > Libreoffice on my system spends 99.9% of the time consuming only 650MB of storage. Opening an office doc makes it require about 165MB of RAM. Most office type docs I have, are a few hundred KB (some smaller) to a couple of MBs. So in your example, that means checking a small document takes (on average) in the order of 100..1000x the document's size worth of RAM. And 'only' 4x that amount of storage for the app doing it. It wasn't long ago that file sizes vs. code to process it, were more like in the 10:1..1:10 range. 200KB text editor, 50KB text. 100KB image, image viewer under 1MB, etc. As file sizes grow (higher screen resolutions etc), a reasonable expectation would be for code size (=file format complexity + interfacing with the OS) to lag behind. But the reverse seems to be happening. And let's not get started about browsers, or (worse) "web frameworks". So if anything, your example nicely demonstrates the point of the article.

There is more to size than storage space. Larger applications take more memory, more cpu caches; things spill over to normal memory, latencies grow and everything runs much slower

michaelmrose 1y ago

For practical purposes given more than enough RAM and fast storage there is no meaningful user discernible performance differences between a 500Mb OS and a 30GB OS. Whereas very small linux distros are useful in several areas like containers and limited hardware running such on the desktop is an objectively worse experience and is moreso a minimalism fetish than a useful strategy.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
There is never actually enough RAM and fast storage.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  There is enough that for most consumer use cases micro optimization only make sense in the context of poverty.
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    One of my work laptops with 16GB of Ram struggles to open a few spreadsheets and browser tabs because of bloat.
    - michaelmrose 1y ago
      Either install more RAM or install a better OS
RetroTechie 1y ago
> (..) there is no meaningful user discernible performance differences between a 500Mb OS and a 30GB OS. I call BS. A small single board computer I have, came with 8 GB of RAM. Not esoecially big or small. 500 MB would fit into this, comfortably. Leaving ~7.5GB for apps. Load everything into RAM once, run from there. RAM bandwith is ~8.5GB/s. 30 GB wouldn't fit. So: swap everything in & out using a (cheapish) SSD over a x1 PCIe lane. Or (more common) from an SD card / eMMC module. Think ~100 MB/s on a good day. That's with apps competing for the memory crumbs left. That's a ~85x factor difference. 2 orders of magnitude. Yes users would notice. Sure, developer with fully decked out system doesn't see this. Or even understand it. But: Size matters. Note: smartphones, tablets etc are not unlike that SBC. And flash storage tends to be on the low-end side where speed is concerned. Desktop you say? Nope, smartphones & tablets are where it's at these days.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  Intelligently swapping stuff from storage to RAM is literally how most OS on earth have worked for a while because as long as you have enough to keep what is liable to be used soon in RAM performance can trivially be excellent. Libreoffice on my system spends 99.9% of the time consuming only 650MB of storage. Opening an office doc makes it require about 165MB of RAM. The consequence of it being swapped out at some point is that it takes slightly longer to get started the next time on the order of an additional 0.6 seconds. If you watched me and the computer whilst I completed a 15 minute task with office you would note that the computer spent most of its time waiting on me rather than the other way around. It would start 0.6 seconds faster but it wouldn't get done meaningfully faster. It would be 6 100ths of 1% faster rather than being "two orders of magnitude faster" Worse if I really want faster libreoffice I can just start that at boot and thereafter create new writer windows in ms I wouldn't be obliged to run my entire OS from RAM to achieve this goal. Virtually nobody runs standard desktop linux on smartphones or tablets. Distro's that target desktops and laptops should not reduce their fitness wherein they are actually used in order to be better suited for environments in which they are not.
  - RetroTechie 1y ago
    > Libreoffice on my system spends 99.9% of the time consuming only 650MB of storage. Opening an office doc makes it require about 165MB of RAM. Most office type docs I have, are a few hundred KB (some smaller) to a couple of MBs. So in your example, that means checking a small document takes (on average) in the order of 100..1000x the document's size worth of RAM. And 'only' 4x that amount of storage for the app doing it. It wasn't long ago that file sizes vs. code to process it, were more like in the 10:1..1:10 range. 200KB text editor, 50KB text. 100KB image, image viewer under 1MB, etc. As file sizes grow (higher screen resolutions etc), a reasonable expectation would be for code size (=file format complexity + interfacing with the OS) to lag behind. But the reverse seems to be happening. And let's not get started about browsers, or (worse) "web frameworks". So if anything, your example nicely demonstrates the point of the article.