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by prmoustache 815 days ago
I guess the primary issue is the chair-->keyboard interface. The fact that browsers can open unlimited number of tabs doesn't mean you don't have to do a little housekeeping.

Plenty of people still use systems with 4GB and lower and it works fine as long as the number of tabs they open is limited.
1 comments
contrarian1234 815 days ago
The primary issue is that browser developers are people that can afford kitted out Macbook pros so the system isn't designed to scale to small/weak systems :))

I don't believe a browser couldn't be designed to have a small RAM footprint. All my tabs could be suspended and saved to disk when in the background (and not spinning any tasks). They can be read back into RAM near instantly when I tab back to them

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nolist_policy 815 days ago
No, Firefox and/or raspberryos just not well engineered for this usecase.

My Chromebook with 8Gb ram has dozens of tabs and web apps open in Chrome, runs one VM with Android and another VM with Linux in turn running Firefox and more. All without breaking a sweat.

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layer8 815 days ago
I run Firefox on 8 GB without any trouble whatsoever. But I also rarely open more than a dozen tabs.
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beagle3 815 days ago
I use Firefox on an 8GB, early 2013 MBP, with hundreds of tabs and an extension, AutoTabDiscard that unloads/suspends them after a couple of hours.

Works beautifully. I have to restart the computer about once a month because of Catalina bugs, but Firefox is super stable.

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GTP 815 days ago
> I have to restart the computer about once a month because of Catalina bugs

I shut down my laptop at the end of the day and turn it back on the day after, regardless of bugs. Why do you try to reboot it as little as possible?

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beagle3 815 days ago
It’s my home computer. It’s there to be used intermittently when needed at random times. It sleeps drawing almost zero power. Why should I shut it down?

Shutdown takes 20 seconds. Startup requires the FileVault password, then 20-30 seconds, then a login, then another 20-30 seconds until desktop is usable (and a few more until Firefox is).

If this was my work computer, it wouldn’t be so inconvenient to restart / shutdown once a day. But for what reason?

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Folcon 815 days ago
I mean nominally that sounds like his preferred experience?

I'm similar, I prefer maintaining state with things until I'm done with them, which makes the current models so frustrating, for all Apple talked about skeuomorphism, for me it's always felt so fake, it's only ever skin deep, I open a webpage and until I'm done with it, it should stay that way.

I've navigated down a third of the page? I've partially filled in a form field? Keep it! There's probably a reason I put that there!

It's not like when I put a piece of paper down on my desk it resets to it's original appearance and orientation every morning. It retains the scribbles and notes! Maybe you like someone else tidying your desk every morning, but I hate it!

Real things exist, our memories exploit these properties so well and what do we get, software that's all about returning to some pristine state that makes it harder for me to recall and use.

I'm curious if they're going to do this same thing with their spatial os, or whether they'll work out that persisting things until people are done with them is a feature.

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