Re:Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome
by gcr on Saturday March 16, 2013 @03:08PM
(#5386385)
This is precisely the motivation behind the renaissance of the "simple / command-line-driven software movement" that you see sprouting up from the corners of the Arch Linux users, Slackware, and elsewhere.
I used to carry around a laptop with 128MB RAM. In 2010-2012, I had 1GB and was happy with it, but I had to adapt:
- Try a tiling window manager. You'd be surprised how many resources it takes to draw those window decorations, which not only saves RAM but also helps you focus better.
- Try a lightweight browser like LuaKit, dwm, surf, etc. Most of them are Webkit-based anyway, so there's not many problems. Plus, a keyboard-driven web browser is a hoot
- Try using emacs/vim instead of Word or OpenOffice. Thanks to LaTeX, I haven't touched a huge office suite in ages.
- Instead of having lots of programs open in the background, why not try some command-line equivalents? If you're not on windows, you have access to a world of utilities: music players, todo lists, file managers, etc.
Now I'm on an 8GB machine, and even under heavy load, I don't think I've ever come close to reaching that limit in the six months I've owned this box. (I don't have any swap space either)
I used to carry around a laptop with 128MB RAM. In 2010-2012, I had 1GB and was happy with it, but I had to adapt:
- Try a tiling window manager. You'd be surprised how many resources it takes to draw those window decorations, which not only saves RAM but also helps you focus better.
- Try a lightweight browser like LuaKit, dwm, surf, etc. Most of them are Webkit-based anyway, so there's not many problems. Plus, a keyboard-driven web browser is a hoot
- Try using emacs/vim instead of Word or OpenOffice. Thanks to LaTeX, I haven't touched a huge office suite in ages.
- Instead of having lots of programs open in the background, why not try some command-line equivalents? If you're not on windows, you have access to a world of utilities: music players, todo lists, file managers, etc.
Now I'm on an 8GB machine, and even under heavy load, I don't think I've ever come close to reaching that limit in the six months I've owned this box. (I don't have any swap space either)