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Memory usage Debian Jessie (stable)
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real bas
May 7, 2015, 8:10:03 PM5/7/15
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Hi guys,
It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM) with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org and have this problem.
The normal usage with Debian Wheezy (7.8.0) is 800~900mb, anyone has the same problem and there is already a solution?
My hardware configuration is:
Processor I5, memory RAM 4 GB and graphic board 1 GB nvidia v346.59.
Eric S Fraga
May 8, 2015, 4:10:03 AM5/8/15
to
On Thursday, 7 May 2015 at 19:45, real bas wrote:
> Hi guys,
> It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org and have this problem.
What does this include?
> Hi guys,
> It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org and have this problem.
I find that, with an 8GB system, most will be used but mostly as a cache
to avoid hitting the disk. The output of "free" will give you that
breakdown. "htop" is also good for visualising the difference between
actual use and the cache.
The key question is whether you end up swapping or not. If not, then
might as well use the memory as much as you can.
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Jan-Rens Reitsma
May 8, 2015, 4:40:03 AM5/8/15
to
On 05/08/2015 01:45 AM, real bas wrote:
> Hi guys,
> It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org <http://debian.org>
> Hi guys,
> It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> and have this problem.
32 bit or 64 bit version?
For amd64 jessie and 4 GB memory:
$ uname -r
3.16.0-4-amd64
$ free -h
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 182M 153M 363M 2.1G
-/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.7G
Swap: 7.6G 0B 7.6G
3.5 GB used of 3.7 GB available memory,
with 2.1 GB available for caching and 182 MB free,
1.0 GB of the available cache and memory is used,
no swap space used.
Kind regards,
Jan-Rens.
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Bob Proulx
May 8, 2015, 3:40:03 PM5/8/15
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Eric S Fraga wrote:
such as DVD or network installation. All are equivalent. What
matters is what you have installed and then what you have started
running.
> What does this include?
>
> I find that, with an 8GB system, most will be used but mostly as a cache
> to avoid hitting the disk. The output of "free" will give you that
> breakdown. "htop" is also good for visualising the difference between
> actual use and the cache.
+1 for htop. Install htop and look at its bar graph visualization.
# apt-get install htop
As my machine is sitting right now with two web browsers open plus
emacs plus dozens of terminals I am consuming 1578M of ram in
userspace processes. The rest of my 4G total ram is used for buffer
cache. I have used 1261M in swap space for pages that I have not
accessed in days and it is better not to have in memory.
I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
browsers first.
Bob
> real bas wrote:
> > It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> > with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org and have this problem.
It does not matter that you installed from CD#1 or by another method
> > It's early to talk about but the memory usage it's too much (3.5 GB RAM)
> > with Debian Jessie. I using ISO (cd-1) of debian.org and have this problem.
such as DVD or network installation. All are equivalent. What
matters is what you have installed and then what you have started
running.
> What does this include?
>
> I find that, with an 8GB system, most will be used but mostly as a cache
> to avoid hitting the disk. The output of "free" will give you that
> breakdown. "htop" is also good for visualising the difference between
> actual use and the cache.
# apt-get install htop
As my machine is sitting right now with two web browsers open plus
emacs plus dozens of terminals I am consuming 1578M of ram in
userspace processes. The rest of my 4G total ram is used for buffer
cache. I have used 1261M in swap space for pages that I have not
accessed in days and it is better not to have in memory.
I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
browsers first.
Bob
real bas
May 8, 2015, 6:30:03 PM5/8/15
to
It is eally, no matter the installation mode. Thanks for suggest htop.
Using htop and iceweasel with 1 tab, I'm using 1.3 GB RAM (and 5 MB swap used), I don't install any programs or startup any program after install debian 8.
llcfree
May 9, 2015, 9:10:02 AM5/9/15
to
> On Fri, 2015-05-08 at 13:31 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
> browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
> ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
> browsers first.
perfectly good computers get short of memory just because browsers (and,
more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
Debian live is the best way to show people what is possible, but just
updating it makes my 4GHz, 2GB old companion unable to hold everything
in RAM.
Loredana
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Eric S Fraga
May 9, 2015, 11:00:02 AM5/9/15
to
On Saturday, 9 May 2015 at 15:11, llcfree wrote:
>> On Fri, 2015-05-08 at 13:31 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
>> I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
>
>> browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
>> ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
>> browsers first.
>
> This is actually becoming a serious problem. Even in debian. Otherwise
> perfectly good computers get short of memory just because browsers (and,
> more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
There are plenty of browsers to choose from in Debian, many of which are
>> On Fri, 2015-05-08 at 13:31 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
>> I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
>
>> browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
>> ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
>> browsers first.
>
> This is actually becoming a serious problem. Even in debian. Otherwise
> perfectly good computers get short of memory just because browsers (and,
> more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
low memory. Iceweasel (Firefox) is not the best choice necessarily...
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Jan-Rens Reitsma
May 10, 2015, 4:20:02 AM5/10/15
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On 05/09/2015 03:11 PM, llcfree wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 2015-05-08 at 13:31 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
>> I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
>> browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
>> ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
>> browsers first.
>
> This is actually becoming a serious problem. Even in debian. Otherwise
> perfectly good computers get short of memory just because browsers (and,
> more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
4 GB DDR3(L) modules are not very expensive.
>
>> On Fri, 2015-05-08 at 13:31 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
>> I find the biggest consumer of ram pages on my system to be the web
>> browsers Chromium and Firefox (Iceweasel). The web has gotten to be a
>> ram hog and when my machine is in need of memory I exit the web
>> browsers first.
>
> This is actually becoming a serious problem. Even in debian. Otherwise
> perfectly good computers get short of memory just because browsers (and,
> more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
>
> Debian live is the best way to show people what is possible, but just
> updating it makes my 4GHz, 2GB old companion unable to hold everything
> in RAM.
I think a modern "budget laptop" with a N2940 quadcore Celeron CPU and 4
> Debian live is the best way to show people what is possible, but just
> updating it makes my 4GHz, 2GB old companion unable to hold everything
> in RAM.
to 8 GB RAM is fast enough to run (for example) Gnome 3 with Rhythmbox,
Iceweasel, Icedove and Eclipse or Anjuta.
>
> Loredana
>
Kind regards,
Jan-Rens.
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Michael
May 10, 2015, 1:00:03 PM5/10/15
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> short of memory just because browsers (and,
> more generally, graphics) are blowing up without control.
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Bob Proulx
May 10, 2015, 2:40:03 PM5/10/15
to
Jan-Rens Reitsma wrote:
> 4 GB DDR3(L) modules are not very expensive.
If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I
> 4 GB DDR3(L) modules are not very expensive.
would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My
ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G
dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from
generations before can't install 4G of memory.
> I think a modern "budget laptop" with a N2940 quadcore Celeron CPU and 4 to
> 8 GB RAM is fast enough to run (for example) Gnome 3 with Rhythmbox,
> Iceweasel, Icedove and Eclipse or Anjuta.
after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers
every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet.
Think of all of the e-waste it creates.
It also isn't very user friendly either. One of the advantages of
Debian is that it makes an effective operating system available to a
wide range of people including people on limited budgets and
resources. Forcing Debian only onto big systems purchased in the last
couple of years would greatly reduce the possible users of it.
Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are
becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am
thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system
will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems
today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM
before we can get more than 4G into them.
Bob
Sreedhav Sistla
May 10, 2015, 6:50:02 PM5/10/15
to
Hi there real bas,
I Am posting Three URLs which "should" show what's going wrong with Firefox under the hood! Two links are from linuxquestions.org and please do not get mislead about the "topic" -"overheating",it also addresses FF's other problems.The third link contains tests as to how to assess the HEALTH(sorry for the caps) of FF,especially the posts by wywerjet!Kindly peruse them! 1) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/firefox-3-0-4-overheats-system-memory-and-cpu-use-inacceptable-687418/ -- Here it's mentioned that adding NoScript has helped and more importantly-upgrading the Adobe Flash player has done the trick!
2) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/why-is-linux-so-resource-hungry-637696/
3) http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=185264&start=20 - though the forum is linuxmint,the actual issue of FF hogging RAM is nicely answered.It also contains some good info' on how to check for the various parameters within the browser which helps!Regards.
A great song by Simon & Art Garfunkel- I Am a Rock with lyrics -url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKY-smJ6aBQ
Michael
May 10, 2015, 7:30:02 PM5/10/15
to
Sreedhav,
Your links appear to not support the complaint.
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/firefox-3-0-4-overheats-system-memory-and-cpu-use-inacceptable-687418/
and that one is way old (Jan 2008)
> A great song by Simon & Art Garfunkel- I Am a Rock with lyrics -url:
finally, maybe this was the most useful link of your post ...
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Your links appear to not support the complaint.
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/firefox-3-0-4-overheats-system-memory-and-cpu-use-inacceptable-687418/
and that one is way old (Jan 2008)
> A great song by Simon & Art Garfunkel- I Am a Rock with lyrics -url:
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Jan-Rens Reitsma
May 11, 2015, 4:00:04 AM5/11/15
to
On 05/10/2015 08:34 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Jan-Rens Reitsma wrote:
>> 4 GB DDR3(L) modules are not very expensive.
>
> If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I
> would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My
> ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G
> dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from
> generations before can't install 4G of memory.
The T60p was released more than 8 years ago. Moore's law predicts the
> Jan-Rens Reitsma wrote:
>> 4 GB DDR3(L) modules are not very expensive.
>
> If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I
> would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My
> ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G
> dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from
> generations before can't install 4G of memory.
performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the
performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
>
>> I think a modern "budget laptop" with a N2940 quadcore Celeron CPU and 4 to
>> 8 GB RAM is fast enough to run (for example) Gnome 3 with Rhythmbox,
>> Iceweasel, Icedove and Eclipse or Anjuta.
>
> The problem with this is that it basically invalidates any system
> after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers
> every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet.
> Think of all of the e-waste it creates.
I think you're remark is true if you substitute 'nearly a decade' for 'a
>> I think a modern "budget laptop" with a N2940 quadcore Celeron CPU and 4 to
>> 8 GB RAM is fast enough to run (for example) Gnome 3 with Rhythmbox,
>> Iceweasel, Icedove and Eclipse or Anjuta.
>
> The problem with this is that it basically invalidates any system
> after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers
> every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet.
> Think of all of the e-waste it creates.
couple of years'. I think you're right when you state that most people
have to buy a brand new computer every two or four years. Don't forget
that only a minority of users wants to stay at the cutting edge of
development for more than a decade.
>
> It also isn't very user friendly either. One of the advantages of
> Debian is that it makes an effective operating system available to a
> wide range of people including people on limited budgets and
> resources. Forcing Debian only onto big systems purchased in the last
> couple of years would greatly reduce the possible users of it.
Windows Vista or Windows 8.1. Installation of Debian on a three year
old, second hand laptop, may mark the beginning of a machine's very
productive second life! :-)
>
> Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are
> becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am
> thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system
> will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems
> today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM
> before we can get more than 4G into them.
>
What do you think of the development of odroid pc's with exynos CPU's?
> Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are
> becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am
> thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system
> will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems
> today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM
> before we can get more than 4G into them.
>
(see hardkernel.com)
> Bob
>
Kind regards,
Jan-Rens.
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Kind regards,
Jan-Rens.
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Dan Christensen
May 11, 2015, 11:00:02 AM5/11/15
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Jan-Rens Reitsma <jan.rens...@gmail.com> writes:
> $ free -h
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 182M 153M 363M 2.1G
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.7G
> Swap: 7.6G 0B 7.6G
>
> 3.5 GB used of 3.7 GB available memory,
> with 2.1 GB available for caching and 182 MB free,
> 1.0 GB of the available cache and memory is used,
> no swap space used.
That's not a correct interpretation of the output of "free". What that
> $ free -h
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 182M 153M 363M 2.1G
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.7G
> Swap: 7.6G 0B 7.6G
>
> 3.5 GB used of 3.7 GB available memory,
> with 2.1 GB available for caching and 182 MB free,
> 1.0 GB of the available cache and memory is used,
> no swap space used.
output says is that 3.5GB is used, but of that, 363MB + 2.1GB = 2.5GB is
currently being used for buffers and cache. The memory used for buffers
and cache can be made available very quickly, so the second line shows
how much is used (1.0GB) and free (2.7GB) with the buffer and cache
usage ignored. So the real thing to take away from the above is in
the second line: only 1.0GB is used and 2.7GB is free. See
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33541/free-output-format/33549#33549
Dan
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Fabio Tobich
May 11, 2015, 10:40:02 PM5/11/15
to
You can drop the cache with this command:
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
See what it does at my laptop:
root@laptop:~# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7439 3029 4409 201 91 1368
-/+ buffers/cache: 1569 5870
Swap: 1906 0 1906
root@laptop:~# sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@laptop:~# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7439 2001 5437 194 2 480
-/+ buffers/cache: 1518 5920
Swap: 1906 0 1906
As you can see, the cache was reduced from 1368 to 480, "freeing" more than 1GB, but on the second line the free ammount remains the same because, as Dan said, it ignores the cache.
Jan-Rens Reitsma
May 12, 2015, 4:10:02 AM5/12/15
to
On 05/12/2015 04:33 AM, Fabio Tobich wrote:
> You can drop the cache with this command:
>
> sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>
> See what it does at my laptop:
>
> root@laptop:~# free -m
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 7439 3029 4409 201 91 1368
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1569 5870
> Swap: 1906 0 1906
>
> root@laptop:~# sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>
> root@laptop:~# free -m
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 7439 2001 5437 194 2 480
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1518 5920
> Swap: 1906 0 1906
>
> As you can see, the cache was reduced from 1368 to 480, "freeing" more
> than 1GB, but on the second line the free ammount remains the same
> because, as Dan said, it ignores the cache.
In
> You can drop the cache with this command:
>
> sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>
> See what it does at my laptop:
>
> root@laptop:~# free -m
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 7439 3029 4409 201 91 1368
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1569 5870
> Swap: 1906 0 1906
>
> root@laptop:~# sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>
> root@laptop:~# free -m
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 7439 2001 5437 194 2 480
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1518 5920
> Swap: 1906 0 1906
>
> As you can see, the cache was reduced from 1368 to 480, "freeing" more
> than 1GB, but on the second line the free ammount remains the same
> because, as Dan said, it ignores the cache.
$ man proc
I read:
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches (since Linux 2.6.16)
Writing to this file causes the kernel to drop clean caches,
dentries, and inodes from memory, causing that memory to
become free. This can be useful for memory management testing
and performing reproducible filesystem benchmarks. Because
writing to this file causes the benefits of caching to be lost,
it can degrade overall system performance.
So dropping caches may increase the amount of overhead.
>
>
>
> 2015-05-11 11:50 GMT-03:00 Dan Christensen <j...@uwo.ca <mailto:j...@uwo.ca>>:
>
> Jan-Rens Reitsma <jan.rens...@gmail.com
> <mailto:jan.rens...@gmail.com>> writes:
>
> > $ free -h
> > total used free shared buffers
> cached
> > Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 182M 153M 363M
> 2.1G
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.7G
> > Swap: 7.6G 0B 7.6G
> >
> > 3.5 GB used of 3.7 GB available memory,
> > with 2.1 GB available for caching and 182 MB free,
> > 1.0 GB of the available cache and memory is used,
> > no swap space used.
>
> That's not a correct interpretation of the output of "free". What that
> output says is that 3.5GB is used, but of that, 363MB + 2.1GB = 2.5GB is
> currently being used for buffers and cache. The memory used for buffers
> and cache can be made available very quickly, so the second line shows
> how much is used (1.0GB) and free (2.7GB) with the buffer and cache
> usage ignored. So the real thing to take away from the above is in
> the second line: only 1.0GB is used and 2.7GB is free. See
>
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33541/free-output-format/33549#33549
If I'm right htop and the Gnome system monitor show the amount of 'Mem:'
>
> > $ free -h
> > total used free shared buffers
> cached
> > Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 182M 153M 363M
> 2.1G
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.7G
> > Swap: 7.6G 0B 7.6G
> >
> > 3.5 GB used of 3.7 GB available memory,
> > with 2.1 GB available for caching and 182 MB free,
> > 1.0 GB of the available cache and memory is used,
> > no swap space used.
>
> That's not a correct interpretation of the output of "free". What that
> output says is that 3.5GB is used, but of that, 363MB + 2.1GB = 2.5GB is
> currently being used for buffers and cache. The memory used for buffers
> and cache can be made available very quickly, so the second line shows
> how much is used (1.0GB) and free (2.7GB) with the buffer and cache
> usage ignored. So the real thing to take away from the above is in
> the second line: only 1.0GB is used and 2.7GB is free. See
>
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33541/free-output-format/33549#33549
and 'Swap:' in the 'used' table.
Thanks for your remarks, since yesterday I've read about many things I
didn't know yet.
Jan-Rens.
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Bob Proulx
May 12, 2015, 6:00:04 PM5/12/15
to
Jan-Rens Reitsma wrote:
the next key. Doing this faster does not give me anything visibly
faster or better. It is still idle waiting for me to press another
key. I am not bitcoin mining on it. The only stress is playing
videos which it does fine.
Small nit: Actually Moore's Law says that the number of transisters
doubles. This increase in hardware density does usually produce more
performance. But it isn't quite the same.
> > The problem with this is that it basically invalidates any system
> > after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers
> > every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet.
> > Think of all of the e-waste it creates.
>
> I think you're remark is true if you substitute 'nearly a decade' for 'a
> couple of years'. I think you're right when you state that most people have
> to buy a brand new computer every two or four years. Don't forget that only
> a minority of users wants to stay at the cutting edge of development for
> more than a decade.
Note that the original poster's machine was only a few years old, much
newer than my machine. He posted that he had an i5 with 4G ram with
1G nvidia graphics. That puts my older Core 2 Duo to shame. And yet
even with his much newer hardware, well within your newer hardware
limits, he was still complaining about lack of memory problems. What
say you to that?
I didn't buy my machine a decade ago. More like five years ago. The
biggest benefit was that I replaced my T43p IDE drive with a much
bigger and faster SATA SSD in the T60p. Plus the T43 always ran hot.
The T42 was a much better machine.
I guess relatively speaking I both am a hard user of equipment and
also I take care of my equipment such that five years using a laptop
seems like the blink of an eye. I am still using it and it is still
going strong.
But really I have been eyeing the lower power cpus and lighter weight
laptops with envy. The problem for me is that they all have low
resolution displays as compared to my T60p. I am sure if I spent
*enough* money I could buy a better display. I keep waiting thinking
that eventually resolutions will increase again. But can I get a
better display and also get a good keyboard at the same time? That
has been a challenge.
Plus I hate to spend the money on a new machine that won't be as good
as the previous machine. By as good I can list all of the important
items to me. For all of those on my list a new machine wouldn't be
better for me. Mostly because the display isn't better.
The only two items that I see so far that a newer machine would be
better for me would be better battery life and lighter weight. I can
only get almost four hours now. I eye some of the 12 hour ARM laptops
with envy. But their keyboards are not as nice as my ThinkPad. And
for the ones I have looked at I am not joyous about their more
restrictive hardware.
> I asume Debian GNU/Linux is at least twice as fast and powerful as Windows
> Vista or Windows 8.1. Installation of Debian on a three year old, second
> hand laptop, may mark the beginning of a machine's very productive second
> life! :-)
Yes! Most definitely. That is one of the best things. The ability
to remove bloat. Running a lean and efficient system is one of the
best things.
However note that he original poster in this thread was complaining
that his 4G ram machine wasn't large enough. I still think 4G of ram
is quite a lot. Or at least it should be. It is still sufficient for
me. If Debian at this time can't fit in 4G then that is bad. And I
said why because there are many smaller ARM machines and I think they
are the future. But I think the problem is most likely heavy desktops
and heavy web browsers. Those are the traditional biggest bloat items
on today's systems.
> > Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are
> > becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am
> > thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system
> > will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems
> > today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM
> > before we can get more than 4G into them.
>
> What do you think of the development of odroid pc's with exynos CPU's? (see
> hardkernel.com)
I think they look interesting. I don't have any experience with
them. I don't know if that is a "yet" or not.
I have been maintaining that the best thing about the Raspberry Pi is
that it forced the price of these types of systems down into the
affordable range. The Raspberry Pi isn't a great system. But it has
created a good market for much better systems. That's great!
Bob
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I
> > would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My
> > ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G
> > dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from
> > generations before can't install 4G of memory.
>
> The T60p was released more than 8 years ago. Moore's law predicts the
> performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the
> performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
Most of the time the cpu in my laptop is idle waiting for me to type
> > If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I
> > would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My
> > ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G
> > dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from
> > generations before can't install 4G of memory.
>
> The T60p was released more than 8 years ago. Moore's law predicts the
> performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the
> performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
the next key. Doing this faster does not give me anything visibly
faster or better. It is still idle waiting for me to press another
key. I am not bitcoin mining on it. The only stress is playing
videos which it does fine.
Small nit: Actually Moore's Law says that the number of transisters
doubles. This increase in hardware density does usually produce more
performance. But it isn't quite the same.
> > The problem with this is that it basically invalidates any system
> > after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers
> > every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet.
> > Think of all of the e-waste it creates.
>
> I think you're remark is true if you substitute 'nearly a decade' for 'a
> couple of years'. I think you're right when you state that most people have
> to buy a brand new computer every two or four years. Don't forget that only
> a minority of users wants to stay at the cutting edge of development for
> more than a decade.
newer than my machine. He posted that he had an i5 with 4G ram with
1G nvidia graphics. That puts my older Core 2 Duo to shame. And yet
even with his much newer hardware, well within your newer hardware
limits, he was still complaining about lack of memory problems. What
say you to that?
I didn't buy my machine a decade ago. More like five years ago. The
biggest benefit was that I replaced my T43p IDE drive with a much
bigger and faster SATA SSD in the T60p. Plus the T43 always ran hot.
The T42 was a much better machine.
I guess relatively speaking I both am a hard user of equipment and
also I take care of my equipment such that five years using a laptop
seems like the blink of an eye. I am still using it and it is still
going strong.
But really I have been eyeing the lower power cpus and lighter weight
laptops with envy. The problem for me is that they all have low
resolution displays as compared to my T60p. I am sure if I spent
*enough* money I could buy a better display. I keep waiting thinking
that eventually resolutions will increase again. But can I get a
better display and also get a good keyboard at the same time? That
has been a challenge.
Plus I hate to spend the money on a new machine that won't be as good
as the previous machine. By as good I can list all of the important
items to me. For all of those on my list a new machine wouldn't be
better for me. Mostly because the display isn't better.
The only two items that I see so far that a newer machine would be
better for me would be better battery life and lighter weight. I can
only get almost four hours now. I eye some of the 12 hour ARM laptops
with envy. But their keyboards are not as nice as my ThinkPad. And
for the ones I have looked at I am not joyous about their more
restrictive hardware.
> I asume Debian GNU/Linux is at least twice as fast and powerful as Windows
> Vista or Windows 8.1. Installation of Debian on a three year old, second
> hand laptop, may mark the beginning of a machine's very productive second
> life! :-)
to remove bloat. Running a lean and efficient system is one of the
best things.
However note that he original poster in this thread was complaining
that his 4G ram machine wasn't large enough. I still think 4G of ram
is quite a lot. Or at least it should be. It is still sufficient for
me. If Debian at this time can't fit in 4G then that is bad. And I
said why because there are many smaller ARM machines and I think they
are the future. But I think the problem is most likely heavy desktops
and heavy web browsers. Those are the traditional biggest bloat items
on today's systems.
> > Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are
> > becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am
> > thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system
> > will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems
> > today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM
> > before we can get more than 4G into them.
>
> What do you think of the development of odroid pc's with exynos CPU's? (see
> hardkernel.com)
them. I don't know if that is a "yet" or not.
I have been maintaining that the best thing about the Raspberry Pi is
that it forced the price of these types of systems down into the
affordable range. The Raspberry Pi isn't a great system. But it has
created a good market for much better systems. That's great!
Bob
Eric S Fraga
May 13, 2015, 5:00:03 AM5/13/15
to
On Tuesday, 12 May 2015 at 15:52, Bob Proulx wrote:
[...]
> However note that he original poster in this thread was complaining
> that his 4G ram machine wasn't large enough. I still think 4G of ram
> is quite a lot. Or at least it should be. It is still sufficient for
> me. If Debian at this time can't fit in 4G then that is bad. And I
> said why because there are many smaller ARM machines and I think they
> are the future. But I think the problem is most likely heavy desktops
> and heavy web browsers. Those are the traditional biggest bloat items
> on today's systems.
You are correct. The problem is not Debian. It may be the particular
suite of software the OP uses. I can say this with some conviction
given that I am currently running Debian "testing" on an OpenPandora
with 512 MB of RAM.
Performance is not great: it has a 600 MHz processor which I overclock
to 800 MHz but memory is not the bottleneck. With X11, a window manager
(ratpoison or lxde), emacs and a few xterms, I am comfortably within the
RAM I have. If I start up Firefox (iceweasel), then problems do
arise... so I use other browsers such as dillo, lynx or, most often,
eww within Emacs.
--
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.1 + Ma Gnus v0.12 + evil-git-43eaf60
: BBDB version 3.1.2 (2014-08-30 22:31:11 -0500)
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[...]
> However note that he original poster in this thread was complaining
> that his 4G ram machine wasn't large enough. I still think 4G of ram
> is quite a lot. Or at least it should be. It is still sufficient for
> me. If Debian at this time can't fit in 4G then that is bad. And I
> said why because there are many smaller ARM machines and I think they
> are the future. But I think the problem is most likely heavy desktops
> and heavy web browsers. Those are the traditional biggest bloat items
> on today's systems.
suite of software the OP uses. I can say this with some conviction
given that I am currently running Debian "testing" on an OpenPandora
with 512 MB of RAM.
Performance is not great: it has a 600 MHz processor which I overclock
to 800 MHz but memory is not the bottleneck. With X11, a window manager
(ratpoison or lxde), emacs and a few xterms, I am comfortably within the
RAM I have. If I start up Firefox (iceweasel), then problems do
arise... so I use other browsers such as dillo, lynx or, most often,
eww within Emacs.
--
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: BBDB version 3.1.2 (2014-08-30 22:31:11 -0500)
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Stefan Monnier
May 18, 2015, 11:50:02 PM5/18/15
to
> The T60p was released more than 8 years ago. Moore's law predicts the
> performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the
> performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
That used to be the case, yes. But this exponential improvement stopped
> performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the
> performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
around the time the T60 came out. You can still get a lot more
performance nowadays, but only if your applications parallelize very
well, which is not really the case for webbrowsers.
Sure, a more recent laptop will be significantly faster, but the
16-times improvement predicted by the old "law" is pretty far off the
mark for many (most?) common tasks.
> I think you're remark is true if you substitute 'nearly a decade' for 'a
> couple of years'. I think you're right when you state that most people have
> to buy a brand new computer every two or four years. Don't forget that
> only a minority of users wants to stay at the cutting edge of development
> for more than a decade.
exponential improvement was true (and boy, the new machines seemed
*fast*). Nowadays, when replacing an old machine with one 5 years
younger I can't see a speed difference until I actually run benchmarks.
IOW nowadays replacing a laptop more often than every 5 years is only
justified by compatibility issues (read: you're using a proprietary OS
(maybe even one built on top of Free Software, such as Android) and the
vendor dropped support for your machine, specifically because they want
to make money selling you a new one) or because you need something
*different* (e.g. smaller).
Hell, most "computers" used nowadays are significantly *less* powerful
than a T60 (but in exchange, they fit in your pocket).
> I asume Debian GNU/Linux is at least twice as fast and powerful as Windows
> Vista or Windows 8.1.
powerful than any proprietary alternative. It did (and still does)
adapt much better to resource-constrained machines, OTOH.
> Installation of Debian on a three year old, second hand laptop, may
> mark the beginning of a machine's very productive second life! :-)
its second life.
Stefan "who upgraded to a T61 a few years ago"
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