Increasing need for RAM

jue-gen · 2023-02-18 08:14:40

I am undecided where to put this topic. Therefore, I simply put it here. It also affects the future development of Devuan:

I increasingly notice that the need for memory is growing. I use Daedalus. Right now KDE Plasma needs 1.5Gi right after startup. Of course this depends on everything that is started with the desktop environment. Therefore I don't want to compare hard numbers here. But my impression is that the system with KDE Plasma demands twice as much RAM, Xfce4, LXQt and LXDE roughly two or three times. I observed this on a ThinkPad with 8 Gi and a desktop with 16 Gi. About 1.5Gi right after startup I think is worth mentioning. What do you guys think?

Camtaf · 2023-02-18 09:50:27

Using XFCE/Firefox, & having been on the internet for some time now, here is my memory usage.....

$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            3731         993        1693         255        1044        2251
Swap:            255           0         255

This shows that the problem is really the KDE desktop.

Last edited by Camtaf (2023-02-18 09:50:57)

jue-gen · 2023-02-18 10:50:36

Camtaf wrote:

Using XFCE/Firefox, & having been on the internet for some time now, here is my memory usage.....
$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            3731         993        1693         255        1044        2251
Swap:            255           0         255
This shows that the problem is really the KDE desktop.

This is how it looks here:

$ free -m
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:      15359        1547       13331          36         786       13811
Swap:            979           0         979

Yes, KDE requires a lot. Gnome but even more, I think. In the past, LXDE needed about 300, Xfce4 about 430, LXQt about 400 directly after startup. But as I said, it also depends on which services are started. I used to have KDE Plasma running at about 600 right after startup.
Maybe it has nothing to do with it, but I mean, at least at the same time as the 6* kernel arrived, the memory consumption went up.

sgage · 2023-02-18 12:32:04

Just another data point. This is a Chimaera system running MATE, immediately after boot:

free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           11727         420       10879          83         427       10975
Swap:              0           0           0

I don't think 420 MB used is that bad in this day and age.

jue-gen · 2023-02-18 12:56:05

sgage wrote:

... I don't think 420 MB used is that bad in this day and age.

No, it's actually not bad. And it fits with how I experienced it with Chimaera. The jump came for me only with Daedalus.

sgage · 2023-02-18 14:57:51

jue-gen wrote:

sgage wrote:
... I don't think 420 MB used is that bad in this day and age.
No, it's actually not bad. And it fits with how I experienced it with Chimaera. The jump came for me only with Daedalus.

I will have to load up my Daedalus image and see if there is a big change - will post something later.

Nili · 2023-02-18 17:37:43

KDE Plasma on Tumbleweed is using 1GB on cold boot and 1.2GB on first Plasma launch on my desktop.

The more RAM you have installed, the more it going to use.

Same for the kernel, the newest kernel tend to eat more ram then previous ones due to new kernel features.

If you see scrots with kernels 2.* or 3.16 series, i remember every scrot i posted from a decade ago it was 25MB in use of 2/4GB total.

Post 2020 hardware pieces it's a different story, RAM has gone to DDR5 and 16GB is considered minimal for KDE, I was just making some transfers from HDD to another HDD via USB3.* to see that 16G memory went down like water.

I just upgraded to 32G very recently to have a somewhat more acceptable optimization.
However, for major transfers GB or TB, even 32GB RAM is not enough since it will start to use swap or zram whatever have been installed.

Nowdays i see as fall short, add more memory if you can, or stick the old way netinst / startx / openbox.

jue-gen · 2023-02-18 19:32:17

Thanks Nili, I can do something with that.
I thought so, but I didn't know it for sure:

Nili wrote:

The more RAM you have installed, the more it going to use.

On my desktop, where I'm writing right now, RAM may be consumed quietly. I don't begrudge the system that. But I also have other computers where RAM has to be saved. There startx / openbox is actually interesting. But here the memory consumption is mainly caused by browsers like Firefox. Then also other browsers etc. must be chosen.
I'm not interested in saving as much RAM as possible, but I'm still interested in the correlations. This is a purely technical interest.
Best regards

charliebrownau · 2023-02-18 20:26:59

Gday

QT + KDE - Bloated by Design
Plasma - Bloated by Design

Web Browsers - Memory glutten and Bloated by Design

---

UI's I would recommend

XFCE too 4.14
XFCE Classic up to 4.14-4.16
FLTKTrinity
FVWM
TDE

-----

Subverison + Bloat by Design

Pulse Audio + Wayland + Wireplumber + GTK3/4/5 + QT
+ Python + Dbus + SubvertD + Mono/Dotnet

---

Languages to avoid
Adobe Flash, Java, Python , Dotnet/mono , Ruby, Go , Dart

---

Good languages

Basic, Pascal , FORTRAN
Assembly
C/Objective C
Pascal
Perl
Shell

I recommend looking into

XFCE Classic
TDE

Distros

EXE - Devuan with TDE
https://exegnulinux.net/

--------

Ways to save ram

- Use RSS
Rssguard,etc

- Use Download program
eg wget or youtube-dlp

Use Peertube + Odysee instead of ((( Censortube)))

--

I recommend using

Hexchat + Mumble instead of ((( Discord)))
GhostWriter + Gnumeric instead of LibreOffice
SimpleScreenRecorder or FFMPEG instead of OBS
Shotcut instead of KDENLIVE

---

Want save more ram

Use SSDM instead of LightDM
Use SLIM instead of SSDM
Use openBOX instead of XFCEWM

---

Want to save ram
Dont use programs that are

C++, Dotnet, QT5/6 , GTK3/4

Also avoid these programs that are webapps

---

Also replace ((( FIREFOX))) with Librewolf

Replace Google default with ungoogled chromium

Best of luck
Sunday 19/Feb/2023

________
Regards
Charliebrownau
* Email - charliebrownau@protonmail.com
* Website - http://charliebrownau.com/
* Video - https://www.JoshwhoTV.com/channel/charliebrownau
* Social - https://pieville.net/@charliebrownau
* Delta Chat - charliebrownau@joshwho.net

jue-gen · 2023-02-18 22:03:17

charliebrownau wrote:

... EXE - Devuan with TDE https://exegnulinux.net/ ...

Wow, lots of stuff to think about. EXE GNU/LINUX: I hear about it for the first time ...

andyprough · 2023-02-18 22:24:31

charliebrownau wrote:

Also replace ((( FIREFOX))) with Librewolf

I mostly use Pale Moon, which uses less ram than Librewolf. I use Librewolf for the few websites that Pale Moon can't handle. And sometimes I just use the links2 browser for a few days. Depends on whether I'm in a keyboarding mood or a mouse-clicking mood.

Seamonkey uses a few mb's less than Pale Moon, but Pale Moon has the superior add-ons that I prefer.

MrReplikant · 2023-02-18 23:33:26

just my two cents here, the

free

command changes how it works in Daedalus.

free

tends to display more usage than before

sgage · 2023-02-19 02:07:49

MrReplikant wrote:

just my two cents here, the
free
command changes how it works in Daedalus.
free
tends to display more usage than before

Do you have a link to some more info on this? My Chimaera boots to 420 MB, my Daedalus boots to 850! Running more or less the same startup stuff. Curious as to what is going on.

fsmithred · 2023-02-19 10:40:29

amd64 devuan desktop-live isos (xfce) in qemu with 3G ram.

Beowulf:

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3002         273        1963          15         766        2561
Swap:             0           0           0

Chimaera:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            2987         343        2004          15         639        2482
Swap:              0           0           0

Daedalus:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            2979         557        1761          14         830        2422
Swap:              0           0           0

Each release uses more resources. Run ps_mem.py to see that each program uses more resources in each release. I've been watching this for over 20 years and it's consistent.

jue-gen · 2023-02-19 11:01:12

fsmithred wrote:

amd64 devuan desktop-live isos (xfce) in qemu with 3G ram. ...
Each release uses more resources. Run ps_mem.py to see that each program uses more resources in each release. I've been watching this for over 20 years and it's consistent.

Yes, but now it would be interesting to know if 3G ram uses less memory than 8G ram or 16G ram or 32G ram.

Nili · 2023-02-19 11:35:54

@charliebrownau truth be told, awesome post. More or less my path that i have followed over the years.

jue-gen wrote:

Thanks Nili, I can do something with that.
I thought so, but I didn't know it for sure:
On my desktop, where I'm writing right now, RAM may be consumed quietly. I don't begrudge the system that. But I also have other computers where RAM has to be saved. There startx / openbox is actually interesting. But here the memory consumption is mainly caused by browsers like Firefox. Then also other browsers etc. must be chosen.
I'm not interested in saving as much RAM as possible, but I'm still interested in the correlations. This is a purely technical interest.
Best regards

I used Pale Moon for years due to Old PC, low memory. So, i must optimized whatever system/startup/selective apps installed without recommends end so on charliebrownau noted. I think give a try Pale Moon if you haven't yet, it is the only browser optimized pretty fine for those who like to have minimalistic usages of browser, there are many thread (use search) on this forum which browser to use. A populated ones

jue-gen wrote:

Yes, but now it would be interesting to know if 3G ram uses less memory than 8G ram or 16G ram or 32G ram.

Although now I can't prove it since I don't have a test or old pc, but I can say it with conviction the more RAM have been installed the more the system it will gona use it.

jue-gen · 2023-02-19 16:35:46

It's all not so simple. During my research I found that unused memory is actually wasted memory. Linux keeps data in main memory (RAM) as long as it is not needed for running or restarted programs. This data in RAM does not interfere, but it speeds up a lot when it is needed. The memory management regulates this. Therefore, the output of free is difficult to interpret. free says how much memory the system is using in advance, free does not say how much is actually needed at the moment. I just found this out in my research. Whether I have represented it all correctly, I don't know. Anyway, I mean that the result of free does not represent what the system actually needs right now.

sgage · 2023-02-19 16:56:49

jue-gen wrote:

It's all not so simple. During my research I found that unused memory is actually wasted memory. Linux keeps data in main memory (RAM) as long as it is not needed for running or restarted programs. This data in RAM does not interfere, but it speeds up a lot when it is needed. The memory management regulates this. Therefore, the output of free is difficult to interpret. free says how much memory the system is using in advance, free does not say how much is actually needed at the moment. I just found this out in my research. Whether I have represented it all correctly, I don't know. Anyway, I mean that the result of free does not represent what the system actually needs right now.

The way that various utilities report RAM usage, and the terms they use for the different categories, have always somewhat confused me. It doesn't help that they change the reporting criteria over time. I have never reached 5 GB of RAM 'usage' on this 12 GB machine, as reported by several different methods. Therefore, I decided long ago to simply trust in my kernel memory management overlords. Or something like that. :-)

Last edited by sgage (2023-02-19 16:57:30)

jue-gen · 2023-02-19 17:19:15

sgage wrote:

... Therefore, I decided long ago to simply trust in my kernel memory management overlords. Or something like that. :-)

Yes, exactly. I have also reached that point. Why shouldn't the RAM be used? It is there and it should not be there uselessly. That's why I don't worry much anymore when KDE Plasma consumes a bit more, especially when there is so much RAM. The system is probably intelligent enough.

fsmithred · 2023-02-19 22:20:08

jue-gen wrote:

fsmithred wrote:
amd64 devuan desktop-live isos (xfce) in qemu with 3G ram. ...
Each release uses more resources. Run ps_mem.py to see that each program uses more resources in each release. I've been watching this for over 20 years and it's consistent.
Yes, but now it would be interesting to know if 3G ram uses less memory than 8G ram or 16G ram or 32G ram.

Chimaera with 2G and 5G:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            1982         332        1013          15         636        1492
Swap:              0           0           0
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            4932         320        3975          15         636        4379
Swap:              0           0           0

Daedalus with 2G and 5G:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            1974         546         765          14         828        1427
Swap:              0           0           0
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            4924         656        3681          14         828        4268
Swap:              0           0           0

charliebrownau · 2023-02-19 23:29:00

Currently running Debian 11 instead of Devuan (So I can do a review video on Debian 11 )

735-765 on boot with Terminal + HTOP
and thats with I2PD chewing resources at boot also

SSMD instead of LightDM
openbox instead of XfceWM

image :-
https://transfer.sh/eStBpf/charliebrownau_Debian11_memeory_Feb2023.png

jue-gen · 2023-02-20 09:30:07

fsmithred wrote:

... Chimaera with 2G and 5G ... Daedalus with 2G and 5G

Yes, there is no difference or no significant difference.
For me it looks like this with Daedalus:
free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
recovery mode 14 Gi 473 Mi 14 Gi 1.1 Mi 172 Mi 14 Gi
KDE Plasma Wayland 14 Gi 1,5 Gi 13 Gi 35 Mi 750 Mi 13 Gi

I find 473 Mi in recovery mode relatively high. That was the memory consumption including Xfce4 in the past. Less was used with LXQT and even less with LXDE.
Well, of course you also get something for this increased memory consumption. I don't want to grumble. But if you want an up-to-date system with Wayland for security reasons, it starts to get difficult with older systems.

Last edited by jue-gen (2023-02-20 20:53:54)

aluma · 2023-02-20 20:40:16

From my subjective point of view - Linux is not a locomotive, where it was necessary to monitor the steam pressure in the boiler, he will cope on his own.

An objective measure of enough memory is zero swap file usage.
With 4 GB of memory on three of my computers for my tasks (web surfing, photo editing, etc.) it is empty.
And the use of memory after startup is a consequence of running services and the size of the kernel. Compile yours for the really needed supported functions if a few megabytes is critical.

But the main "intruder" is modern sites, with their "decorations", browsers are forced to support them, although, in most cases, they are completely unnecessary.

Last edited by aluma (2023-02-20 20:40:42)

jue-gen · 2023-02-20 21:05:18

aluma wrote:

... But the main "intruder" is modern sites, with their "decorations", browsers are forced to support them, although, in most cases, they are completely unnecessary.

Yes, I see it the same way. Unfortunately, nobody writes HTML in the editor these days. For many pages that would be enough and it would be better for the eye and orientation than those horrible pages created with CMS tools like Wordpress. If the actual information of a page in the source code is only 0.5%, then something is wrong. This code bloat is sick and it costs masses of electrical energy. We have the same thing with HTML mails. I once read that 1 less nuclear power plant would be needed on earth if everyone composing HTML mails switched to TXT mails.

golinux · 2023-02-20 21:19:23

Do you know about Project Gemini? Produces sane web pages . . .

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2023-02-18 08:14:40

Increasing need for RAM

#2 2023-02-18 09:50:27

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#3 2023-02-18 10:50:36

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#4 2023-02-18 12:32:04

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#5 2023-02-18 12:56:05

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#6 2023-02-18 14:57:51

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#7 2023-02-18 17:37:43

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#8 2023-02-18 19:32:17

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#9 2023-02-18 20:26:59

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#10 2023-02-18 22:03:17

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#11 2023-02-18 22:24:31

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#12 2023-02-18 23:33:26

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#13 2023-02-19 02:07:49

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#14 2023-02-19 10:40:29

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#15 2023-02-19 11:01:12

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#16 2023-02-19 11:35:54

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#17 2023-02-19 16:35:46

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#18 2023-02-19 16:56:49

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#19 2023-02-19 17:19:15

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#20 2023-02-19 22:20:08

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#21 2023-02-19 23:29:00

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#22 2023-02-20 09:30:07

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#23 2023-02-20 20:40:16

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#24 2023-02-20 21:05:18

Re: Increasing need for RAM

#25 2023-02-20 21:19:23

Re: Increasing need for RAM

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