Linux Memory (again)

Sat Nov 7 19:19:29 MST 2020

> 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.

Gnome doesn't use that much RAM at all -- on a system with lots of RAM and when running Wayland, I've found that typically about 800MB of RAM is in use total once the system is booted. This includes the typical services you'd have running for Gnome as well, such as NetworkManager, D-Bus, PulseAudio, etc..

On systems with less RAM, I've seen this get all the way down to a few hundred MB after boot.

Additionally, as far as I know, Gnome makes use of the GPU to render the shell and other UI elements, and therefore would actually free up the CPU to perform other tasks, thus theoretically being faster than something like OpenBox which I imagine does not use GPU rendering. That said if you don't have a GPU or have to fallback to the VESA driver then you may have a problem. If you have any decent GPU though from the last 15 years you should be just fine.

Lastly, if we're ever going to see mass-market usage of Linux, desktop environments like Gnome and KDE are going to be the ones to take us there. Realistically, no normie coming from Windows/MacOS is going to want to use something like OpenBox or other minimal window managers like DWM, i3, etc.. They're going to want it to just work, with an interface that has familiar concepts to the ones they're used to if it doesn't flat out look like Windows or MacOS.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2020, at 6:28 PM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> 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
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