3 ms·
I remember, in 2007, running FreeBSD on a desktop with 512MB RAM and only using 64MB of it running full GNOME 2 and a running instance of Firefox with a couple
by dTal 9mo ago
I remember, in 2007, running FreeBSD on a desktop with 512MB RAM and only using 64MB of it running full GNOME 2 and a running instance of Firefox with a couple tabs. A totally standard desktop experience.
Even better, my laptop at the time had only 128MB of RAM and ran Windows XP - a supported, albeit minimal, configuration. XP was bloatier than FreeBSD of course, and ran correspondingly less well, but replacing explorer.exe with a shell called "blackbox" - an openbox-alike - and carefully curating applications (e.g. K-Meleon instead of Firefox) rendered it a perfectly viable multitasking desktop. I have a screenshot from that machine showing an AIM window, an mp3 player, an IDE for an embedded system, and a web browser with the documentation open for that IDE, all running comfortably (on one of its several desktops - yes you could have multiple desktops on XP with alternative shells such as blackbox).
Computers now require approximately 30x the RAM to achieve similar levels of "barely viable" performance - 4GB is considered the absolute minimum for general purpose desktop viability. And qualitatively speaking, what do they do now, that my 2007 fleet did not do? It is difficult to say. One is led to the conclusion that something has gone terribly awry with resource consumption.
- alyandon 9mo agoIt's the web browser and electron based apps that are the primary consumers of ram on my desktops with the DE and OS ram usage being minimal by comparison. I have an ancient laptop from 2008 with 4GB of ram that runs a modern KDE desktop and related applications just fine that I use for troubleshooting stuff. However, the moment I open a web browser it basically falls to pieces. I hate everything about this. :-/
- ValdikSS 9mo agoThat's easy to fix: Step 1: sudo tee /etc/tmpfiles.d/mglru.conf <<EOF w- /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/enabled - - - - y w- /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/min_ttl_ms - - - - 300 EOF Step 2: apt install zram-tools sed -i 's/#PERCENT=.*/PERCENT=130/' /etc/default/zramswap
- dTal 9mo ago4GB still seems excessive, by at least one and probably several orders of magnitude, for what vanilla KDE actually does: browse files, manage windows, and edit text. And KDE is one of the best modern options.
- alyandon 9mo agoKDE doesn't need 4 GB of ram - that's just what my laptop happens to have which is more than ample to run the OS + KDE + native applications.
- whatevaa 9mo agoPeople are saying that 8GB for Android phone is too small. All of those applications are not electron either. There is bloat everywhere.
- lproven 9mo ago> I have an ancient laptop from 2008 with 4GB of ram that runs a modern KDE desktop Try Alpine Linux, with Xfce which can do most of the same things. Then enable swap compression -- add this to the end of the kernel line in your bootloader: zswap.enabled=1 This compresses everything going to swap, and decompresses it coming back: less disk reads and writes, and less space used. Everything gets quicker.
- pjmlp 9mo agoThe computer I installed Slackware 2.0 was a P75 with 16 MB of RAM! Naturally this cannot work when every application is an instance of Chrome. I am glad for the RAM prices, maybe this will teach a new generation on how to care about their data structures again.
- lproven 9mo ago> I am glad for the RAM prices, maybe this will teach a new generation on how to care about their data structures again. I have been thinking that exact same thought recently. I hope prices stay elevated for a few years, so people learn to be a bit more frugal with resources.
- overfeed 9mo ago> It is difficult to say. It isn't: you can still download the 2007-vintage FreeBSD desktop and run it in a VM today if you'd like. The CD image-files are quick downloads with modern broadband speeds. Prepare to be disappointed though.