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Comment by joe_mamba | Hacker News Reader

> I have currently 2 browsers open and my memory commit is 370MB..

In what context?

>If I hear that Win11 uses 3GB of RAM idling

Modern Gnome and KDE distros with batteries included also idea at around 2GB RAM which is a useless metric anyway as Windows 11 also preloads frequently used takes and apps on boot.

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What do you mean what context? Just move yourself 10 years in past and see how RAM much web browsing used.. There is just no sane reason why it balooned so much.

Of course, progress needs to be done. Better graphics, more data.. But now all the consumption goes into shitty decoration with is useless and waste resources.

Other big usage is all that ads and tracking shit behind the scene..

I recently installed Arch Linux on a fairly old (but not ancient) Intel T2 Mac, with the GNOME DE, and it uses less than 1.5GB of RAM. I went for the standard gnome package which as far as I can tell is "batteries included."

That leaves about 6.5GB for programs, which I think is acceptable.

Add ZRAM

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ZRAM

Less than that, between 900MB and 1.2GB and that's due to file and stuff indexation. The good thing on Linux and BSDs is you can swap for a light wm/compositor and your back below 150MB idle.

> Modern Gnome and KDE distros with batteries included also idea at around 2GB RAM

Really? I'm seeing 1.3 for Mint/Cinnamon.

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