4 ms·

I have 1 gig of RAM. I'd love to see every program not waste tens or hundreds of megabytes not doing anything useful with it. I don't want programs to cause h

by clarry 12y ago

I have 1 gig of RAM. I'd love to see every program not waste tens or hundreds of megabytes not doing anything useful with it. I don't want programs to cause heavy swapping and slowdowns, I don't want them to crash because they ran out of memory. I want things to be done reasonably efficiently to allow me to do more with the amazing computing power I did not have fifteen years ago, with a better UX. Sadly, a lot of current software does behave like it owns all of the RAM on the machine. But modern browsers are particularly bad, and it doesn't help that you need the web for so many things today. With browsers I'm not given much choice. > This is what virtual address space does, it's pretending that each program has access to any place in the memory. No, not at all. It's just handing control over to the operating system so paging can be handled transparently and programs can't overwrite each others' memory. Programs still have to acknowledge and respect the fact that memory is a finite resource, and they can't have all of it. That's how it has always been, a virtual address space doesn't change the fact.

nnethercote 12y ago
This discussion sums up one of the great challenges for browser vendors -- satisfying users with wildly different hardware.
kalleboo 12y ago
> I have 1 gig of RAM. Why do you torture yourself like that when another 4 GB costs $15?
- eropple 12y ago
  You assume his computer is new enough to support more than 1GB.
  - vacri 12y ago
    If the computer is that old, then the user is an outlier and not the target audience for the modern major browsers. Better off finding a niche browser.
    - clarry 12y ago
      Actually my computer is only four years old, and supports up to 2GB of RAM. It is hard to find a working niche browser when Mozilla and Google are doing everything to make sure the web depends on their behemoths' complexity. They are pushing for the Web Platform. They are constantly adding new features. I used to use Links 2 as my primary browser until about a year or two ago. I would have preferred to keep using it (actually I still do, but it's no longer primary), but one day, a few years ago, Google said let's kill IE6. I can't remember the date. But I know web devs had a party and since that day, the amount of Javascript on the web has skyrocketed, and it's gone from an optional "experience enhancer" to a requirement in many cases. So I'm not given much choice. But this isn't just about me personally; I could buy a new computer today if I wanted to. What people have pointed out elsewhere in the comments is true -- there are people who still have old computers, much older than mine. And people (parents too) who cannot afford much else besides aging second hand machines.
      - userbinator 12y ago
        What irks me the most about this whole "web must move forward" mentality is that machines that would otherwise be perfectly usable for the sorts of basic tasks one used to be able to do even without these new web technologies (i.e. read email, news, etc.) are being obsoleted and scrapped by people buying newer, much faster hardware --- only to be used just for those same basic tasks again.
        Omniusaspirer 12y ago
        Is that really a bad thing though? These old PC's are extremely wasteful with electricity relative to newer ones, so how much money are people really saving? People are so quick to ignore the ongoing costs and obsess over the immediate. Basic web browsing/word processing is incredibly cheap to do right now in a new PC (sub $200 sans peripherals for the absolute newest hardware). In my opinion, these are machines that will handle web tasks for at least the next 10 years barring some huge shift that I cannot foresee.

by clarry 12y ago

nnethercote 12y ago

This discussion sums up one of the great challenges for browser vendors -- satisfying users with wildly different hardware.

kalleboo 12y ago

> I have 1 gig of RAM. Why do you torture yourself like that when another 4 GB costs $15?

eropple 12y ago
You assume his computer is new enough to support more than 1GB.
- vacri 12y ago
  If the computer is that old, then the user is an outlier and not the target audience for the modern major browsers. Better off finding a niche browser.
  - clarry 12y ago
    Actually my computer is only four years old, and supports up to 2GB of RAM. It is hard to find a working niche browser when Mozilla and Google are doing everything to make sure the web depends on their behemoths' complexity. They are pushing for the Web Platform. They are constantly adding new features. I used to use Links 2 as my primary browser until about a year or two ago. I would have preferred to keep using it (actually I still do, but it's no longer primary), but one day, a few years ago, Google said let's kill IE6. I can't remember the date. But I know web devs had a party and since that day, the amount of Javascript on the web has skyrocketed, and it's gone from an optional "experience enhancer" to a requirement in many cases. So I'm not given much choice. But this isn't just about me personally; I could buy a new computer today if I wanted to. What people have pointed out elsewhere in the comments is true -- there are people who still have old computers, much older than mine. And people (parents too) who cannot afford much else besides aging second hand machines.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      What irks me the most about this whole "web must move forward" mentality is that machines that would otherwise be perfectly usable for the sorts of basic tasks one used to be able to do even without these new web technologies (i.e. read email, news, etc.) are being obsoleted and scrapped by people buying newer, much faster hardware --- only to be used just for those same basic tasks again.
      - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
        Is that really a bad thing though? These old PC's are extremely wasteful with electricity relative to newer ones, so how much money are people really saving? People are so quick to ignore the ongoing costs and obsess over the immediate. Basic web browsing/word processing is incredibly cheap to do right now in a new PC (sub $200 sans peripherals for the absolute newest hardware). In my opinion, these are machines that will handle web tasks for at least the next 10 years barring some huge shift that I cannot foresee.