Which OS has "better" RAM management?

[rfmbozo]

Hello gentle techies on the forums, have a question regarding how efficient the various OS's are with managing RAM.

I'm in the market for a thin-and-light laptop, and i'm wondering what kind of performance(or lack thereof) i am getting by sticking with a machine with 8gb of ram. I don't run any professional applications, just the usual word processing and the occasional spreadsheet. As part of word processing i will have to perform a fair bit of research online and probably will have dozens of tabs open to reference back and forth.

And this is why i wonder what kind of stuttering, if at all, i am bound to face within the various operating systems(for linux, think either Ubuntu or Manjaro).

 

So as a general question, barring the OS, is 8gb of RAM really enough for the workload i will have for this machine?

Out of the three OS's, do people know which OS manages available ram better?

Given that my workload is fairly "light", would it make sense to buy a base model thin-and-light with 8gb ram?

 

Appreciate any input that you lovely folks have. Cheers.

[Slottr]

What software do you use?

 

If it's the office suite, you'll basically be stuck to windows or MacOS

[rfmbozo]

I usually use the online versions of word and excel - they're enough for my needs.

[SupaKomputa]

8gb is more than enough for those task.

You can use linux is your task is only those and nothing else.

But for the sake of comfort and ease of use, go with windows.

[rfmbozo]

Really? Sorry not to sound incredulous, but having that many tabs open and referencing back and forth doesn't become as big a resource hog? I've been under the impression that the modern browsers are major ram hogs

[Prodigy_Smit]

44 minutes ago, rfmbozo said:

Really? Sorry not to sound incredulous, but having that many tabs open and referencing back and forth doesn't become as big a resource hog? I've been under the impression that the modern browsers are major ram hogs

You need to quote people for them to see your replies.

As for your question, people over exaggerate the hogging of modern browsers. You would be perfectly fine with 8gb of RAM for your tasks on windows.

 

56 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

8gb is more than enough for those task.

You can use linux is your task is only those and nothing else.

But for the sake of comfort and ease of use, go with windows.

 

[homeap5]

Not so long ago browsers are 32 bit only and still some people had lot of tabs opened. So it's not really important how much ram do you have if you're browsing internet. At least in most cases.

[GoodBytes]

If you go with Windows:

 

To add, if RAM concerns you, you can use the new Edge web browser, which is Chromium based, but with Microsoft optimization and includes Microsoft service integration (as opposed to Google's one in the case of Chrome). It consumes a bit less RAM. And soon, on the official version, it will sleep unused tabs, and load them off the RAM. So, if you are the kind of people who don't use bookmarks, then this a great to reduce memory conception.

 

It also has Collection feature, where you can save group of tabs together to restore them later on, helping you to reduce RAM consumption, by reducing active tabs. Microsoft teased a Linux version of the new Edge web browser, but I don't think it will come out any time soon. Maybe mid next year we might see a beta version for Ubuntu, if it were my guess.

 

[whm1974]

On 11/17/2020 at 9:07 PM, GoodBytes said:

If you go with Windows:

 

To add, if RAM concerns you, you can use the new Edge web browser, which is Chromium based, but with Microsoft optimization and includes Microsoft service integration (as opposed to Google's one in the case of Chrome). It consumes a bit less RAM. And soon, on the official version, it will sleep unused tabs, and load them off the RAM. So, if you are the kind of people who don't use bookmarks, then this a great to reduce memory conception.

 

It also has Collection feature, where you can save group of tabs together to restore them later on, helping you to reduce RAM consumption, by reducing active tabs. Microsoft teased a Linux version of the new Edge web browser, but I don't think it will come out any time soon. Maybe mid next year we might see a beta version for Ubuntu, if it were my guess.

 

I wonder how BSD and Linux users will straight up refuse to use Edge if released next Year?

[Nayr438]

On 11/17/2020 at 9:07 PM, GoodBytes said:

It also has Collection feature, where you can save group of tabs together to restore them later on, helping you to reduce RAM consumption, by reducing active tabs. Microsoft teased a Linux version of the new Edge web browser, but I don't think it will come out any time soon. Maybe mid next year we might see a beta version for Ubuntu, if it were my guess.

Linux already has Dev Preview builds, though I guess it's not the same as a Beta build.

https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/?platform=linux

 

1 hour ago, whm1974 said:

I wonder how BSD and Linux users will straight up refuse to use Edge if released next Year?

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see it become Ubuntu's default browser given the relationship between Canonical and Microsoft.

Given that Edge is proprietary software and a lot of the Linux community being Anti Microsoft, I  can't see it being adopted well.

 

For me Personally, I have no reason to switch. Firefox does everything I ask of it and integrates well with KDE and GNOME.

[whm1974]

1 hour ago, Nayr438 said:

Linux already has Dev Preview builds, though I guess it's not the same as a Beta build.

https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/?platform=linux

 

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see it become Ubuntu's default browser given the relationship between Canonical and Microsoft.

Given that Edge is proprietary software and a lot of the Linux community being Anti Microsoft, I  can't see it being adopted well.

 

For me Personally, I have no reason to switch. Firefox does everything I ask of it and integrates well with KDE and GNOME.

Firefox is almost the Standard browser on Linux. There is Otter which is based on Classic Opera back before Opera switched to Chrome Codebase.

 

I have fond memories of using Opera on BeOS but I digress...

 

With Lightweight Linux Distros it varies widely. Often it is Midori for Distros if Xfce is the Standard DE.

[unsorted]

On 11/15/2020 at 7:07 PM, rfmbozo said:

Given that my workload is fairly "light", would it make sense to buy a base model thin-and-light with 8gb ram?

 

Even 4GB ram should be fine on a lighter-weight Linux distro for some fairly serious tabs being opened. But it all depends on your exact usage. An ad-blocker like Ublock Origin can make really low-end machines fly when browsing...so I would consider this a must.

 

In addition to thin-and-light, perhaps consider upgradeable too. Is the hd/ssd upgradeable or soldered in? Is the RAM upgradeable? Is the battery easily replaced? These may or may hot be issues to you, but I find this extremely useful for long-term usage of any machine because faults and general ageing of the battery can and does happen, plus having the option to  upgrade to some sweet cheap hardware in the future is priceless. I am not a fan of many of the soldered-in unupgrradeable entry-level laptops available now, however this might not be something you are interested in, so please ignore if not.

 

The second-hand market is filled with suitable models just waiting for Linux to be installed on them. The only real problem is some of them might have batteries that don't hold much charge, or they might not be as thin and light as you would like.

 

Personally I am running a netbook from 8 years ago with 2GB ram right now with an Intel Atom processor running MX Linux (xfce) . Aside from some necessary limiting of tabs in the browser, I don't feel too restricted to be honest. It does general net tasks and office stuff fine for my non-demanding needs (using LibreOffice).

 

 

 

[Member of PC master race]

AmigaOS is pretty good with ram mangement because it don't require much of it because it old

[LloydLynx]

From the mainstream Linux distros, Fedora Workstation 33 has the best RAM management. It uses ZRAM which is night and day faster than a traditional SWAP partition, and it comes with EarlyOOM which kills out of control processes before they consume all your RAM. But ZRAM is terrible if you have any less than 8gb of RAM because instead of using a partition it compresses RAM contents and that doesn't work very well with a small amount of RAM, but it is lightning fast.

[TorC]

It took me w while before I found out I could configure parmeters of RAM myself.

ZRAM is just part of the story (though a big one).  Here are some links I have bookmarded regarding swappiness and ZRAM.

 

https://haydenjames.io/linux-performance-almost-always-add-swap-space/

 

https://haydenjames.io/linux-performance-almost-always-add-swap-part2-zram/

 

https://askubuntu.com/questions/414244/should-i-enable-zram-and-or-lower-swappiness-value

 

https://appuals.com/configure-swappiness-in-buntu-distributions/

 

I hope they help someone out there, if not the OP.

 

[WhitetailAni]

I ran a Core i3-2365M and 4GB of LPDDR3-1333 on Linux Mint 17.3.

It ran MInecraft 1.7.10 (with like 20 mods) and at least 10 Chrome tabs absolutely flawlessly unless I had like 200 zombies on screen.

[Jenia995]

On 12/15/2020 at 4:48 AM, Member of PC master race said:

AmigaOS is pretty good with ram mangement because it don't require much of it because it old

A good idea for us.

AmigaOS is working on my colleague's computer.