this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
765 points (97.5% liked)

196

16724 readers
2276 users here now

Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.

Rule: You must post before you leave.

^other^ ^rules^

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

There’s a difference between “free” memory, and “available” memory.

I agree with this, and I'm sure most people complaining about Firefox or Chrome's abhorrent memory usage would too. The problem with most browsers is that they eat up the available memory and often do not give it back. So you end up with situations where you're running low on available RAM even though you have 32GB installed.

Buy the memory, use as much of it as you can, as often as you can. Go wild with it. Enjoy.

Sure, if you release it when not using it, otherwise unlimited RAM privilege revoked. Memory leaks suck and when they chew up all your RAM and they continue to happen, offending apps should either be no longer used, or limited to their minimum necessary RAM requirements to limit the damage they'll do.

Hence why I capped Firefox at 8GB, anything more would be wasted when it inevitably leaks.

Desktop file to limit Firefox to 8GB of RAM

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Firefox RAM limit 8GB
GenericName=Firefox Ram limit 8GB
Comment=Limit RAM for Firefox to 8GB;
Exec=systemd-run --user --scope -p MemoryLimit=8G firefox
Icon=firefox
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility;Development;
StartupWMClass=Firefox