Linux Memory (again)

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 6 Nov 2020 07:48:40 -0700
Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> Memory usage is getting frustrating for me, as whether I use 64gb of
> ram, or 128gb, I still tend to exhaust memory on my system.  My
> laptop currently has 64gb, and started freaking out this morning, to
> find I was hitting oom's again with browsing and some general use as
> wake up.

Ouch. I have no problem using 16GB RAM

> 
> Trying to figure out with htop what is using all my memory, firefox
> was a big consumer, using ~25gb of ram once killed.  Yeah, it's like
> that. Chrome was typically worse.  I use 6 profiles, as I have to for
> different companies I consult for, mostly due to different gsuite
> accounts and different o365 accounts that will not play nice in a
> same profile.  Same for Chrome.  I figure I can't be the only person
> that does this, perhaps so, but the memory utilization with with only
> a few tabs on each is astounding.

Chrome/Chromium and Firefox are absolute pigs. I finally tamed Firefox
ty setting it to drop all cache and other stuff upon exit, and then I
shut down all instances of Firefox every day.

> 
> I tend to run several VM's at a time, a full instance of windoze10 or
> two with 4-8gb of ram work fine.

I don't know how many VMs you run, but those eat up memory.

> 
> I use pluma text editor a lot as the gedit fork from mint, which I'll
> find uses 3-4gb of memory with a few dozen text files open.  Of text.
>  Doesn't seem to be worth a few gig of ram.

What the heck kind of editor requires 3-4GB RAM? That sounds crazy to
me. Why do you have a few dozen files open simultaneously?

> 
> Libreoffice itself tends to use 3-4gb of memory keeping a dozen or two
> files open, which again flipping between several customers, I tend to
> work on, review, etc constantly.

Libreoffice is kind of a pig. Is there something else you can use? And
why a dozen or two simultaneous files open? This sounds like a workflow
nightmare. Do you mean one Libreoffice instance with 24 files open, or
a bunch of separate Libreoffices in VMs. If the latter, yeah, that's
going to burn a lot of RAM, even more than one instance with 24
documents.

> 
> Even on boot, kde tends to use ~3.5gb of memory, and after running
> for a few week or two, with everything else killed, will start
> consuming ~9gb with nothing else running.  No idea where it goes.

Ohhhh, KDE. I call that Krash, Delay, Expand. See
http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm . I use OpenBox, which
is a low-RAM, just-the-facts window manager. On every machine I ever
used KDE, performance was bad and on lower RAM machines, things ground
to a halt.

Gnome and KDE are luxuries for folks with lightning fast processors and
huge quantities of RAM, who want their computers to perform like a 2015
computer with 4GB RAM.



> 
> My question is how the heck do others run linux with only 4-8gb of
> ram on a "normal" system?  Most linux users are likely IT
> professionals like myself, just curious what the heck I'm doing wrong.

I'm running a 2014 computer:
* AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (dual core)
	- 3.1Ghz dualcore
* 16GB RAM
* Openbox with dmenu and UMENU2

With no browsers open, this machine is is snappy as hell. With firefox
set to dump cache upon exit, as long as I do reasonable housekeeping on
tabs, and prophylactically close all firefox instances at least once a
day, everything's pretty good.

That being said, this is a 2014 machine, so I'm soon buying a 3.6 Ghz 6
core (65 watt) with 64GB RAM. This will give me more latitude in
running Chromium, which I need for Jitsi, and allow me less stringent
housekeeping in Firefox.
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive