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Is memory consumption a real problem for desktops in 2013?

• rav 13y ago
  The OS will use free memory for disk caches which will help speed up any modern desktop. That's the 'cached' column output by `free`. My computer currently reports 18 GB used out of 20 GB, but 15 GB of that is disk caching. The more memory your desktop environment grabs, the less memory is available for disk caching. It might not be a problem, but it certainly pays off to invest in extra memory and in decreasing memory consumption of applications.
• Lerc 13y ago
  Yes. My first computers TRS-80 through to Amiga had massive advancements in capability, and while the memory increased with each step it was the gain in power that drove upgrades. Since then the pressure to upgrade has been primarily memory. CPU has not really been an issue because the memory pressure forces an upgrade by virtue of new memory module architecture necessitating a new motherboard. The machines I am currently using perform poorly because they do not have enough memory. I'm in the saving-for-a-new-machine phase, suffering poor performance on computers with more than adequate CPU power. It must be said though, the Window Manager probably plays a very small part of that load. While browsers take a major single chunk. Much of the drain comes from the accumulation of everything. So many apps have a philosopy that "an extra 20(0) meg doesn't matter when you have gigabytes" that eventually they combine to actually eat up your gigabytes.
• ralphc 13y ago
  If you play around 1) older machines, or 2) desktops in VMs, it's handy to know what uses less memory. I used to use XFCE in these circumstances but have switched to LXDE based on comparisons like these. Good balance between memory usage and utility/familiarity.