[giamma]

It used to be like that, computer had limited resources and desktop environments were light. Then at some point RAM became less and less of an issue, and everything started to get bigger and less efficient.

Coyuld anyone summarize why a desktop Windows/MacOs now needs so much more RAM than in the past? is it the UI animations, color themes, shades etc etc or is it the underlying operating system that has more and more features, services etc etc ?

I believe it's the desktop environment that is greedy, because one can easily run a linux server on a raspberry pi with very limited RAM, but is it really the case?

[marhee]

> Coyuld anyone summarize why a desktop Windows/MacOs now needs so much more RAM than in the past

Just a single retina screen buffer, assuming something like 2500 by 2500 pixels, 4 byte per pixel is already 25MB for a single buffer. Then you want double buffering, but also a per-window buffer since you don't want to force rewrites 60x per second and we want to drag windows around while showing contents not a wireframe. As you can see just that adds up quickly. And that's just the draw buffers. Not mentioning all the different fonts that are simultaneously used, images that are shown, etc.

(Of course, screen bufferes are typically stored in VRAM once drawn. But you need to drawn first, which is at least in part on the CPU)

[torginus]

Per window double buffering is actively harmful - as it means you're triple buffering, as the render goes window buffer->composite buffer->screen, and that's with perfect timing, and even this kind of latency is actively unpleasant when typing or moving the mouse.

If you get the timing right, there should be no need for double-buffering individual windows.

[zozbot234]

You don't need to do all of this, though. You could just do arbitrary rendering using GPU compute, and only store a highly-compressed representation on the CPU.

[marhee]

Yes, but then the GPU needs that amount of ram, so it's fairer to look at the sum of RAM + VRAM requirements. With compressed representations you trade CPU cycles for RAM. To save laptop battery better required copious amounts of RAM (since it's cheap).

[zozbot234]

The web browser is the biggest RAM hog these days as far as low-end usage goes. The browsing UI/chrome itself can take in the many hundred megs to render, and that's before even loading any website. It's becoming hard to browse even very "light" sites like Wikipedia on less than a 4GB system at a bare minimum.

[flohofwoe]

> is it the UI animations, color themes, shades etc etc or is it the underlying operating system that has more and more features, services etc etc ?

...all of those and more? New software is only optimized until it is not outright annoying to use on current hardware, it's always been like that and that's why there are old jokes like:

    "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

    "Software is like a gas, it expands to consume all available hardware resources."

    "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster"

...etc..etc... variations of those "laws" are as old as computing.

Sometimes there are short periods where the hardware pulls a little bit ahead for a few short years of bliss (for instance the ARM Macs), but the software quickly catches up and soon everything feels as slow as always (or worse).

That also means that the easiest way to a slick computing experience is to run old software on new hardware ;)

[creshal]

Indeed. Much of a modern Linux desktop e.g. runs inside one of multiple not very well optimized JS engines: Gnome uses JS for various desktop interactions, and all major desktops run a different JS engine as a different user to evaluate polkit authorizations (so exactly zero RAM could be shared between those engines, even if they were identical, which they aren't), and then half your interactions with GUI tools happens inside browser engines, either directly in a browser, or indirectly with Electron. (And typically, each Electron tool bundles their own slightly different version of Electron, so even if they all run under the same user, each is fully independent.)

Or you can ignore all that nonsense and run openbox and native tools.

[torginus]

Which is baffling as to why they chose it - I remember there being memory leaks because GObject uses a reference counted model - cycles from GObject to JS then back were impossible to collect.

They did hack around this with heuristics, but they never did solve the issue.

They should've stuck with a reference counted scripting language like Lua, which has strong support for embedding.

[burner420042]

A month with CrunchBang Plus Plus (which is a really nice distribution based on Openbox) and you'll appreciate how quick and well put together Openbox and text based config files are.

[lproven]

> Much of a modern Linux desktop e.g. runs inside one of multiple not very well optimized JS engines

A couple of years ago I saw a talk by Sophie Wilson, the designer of the ARM chip. She had been amused by someone saying there was an ARM inside every iPhone: she pointed out that there was 6-8 assymetric ARM cores in the CPU section of the SOC, some big and fast, some small and power-frugal, an ARM chip in the Bluetooth controller, another in the Wifi controller, several in the GSM/mobile controller, at least one in the memory controller, several in the flash memory controller...

It wasn't "an ARM chip". It was half a dozen ARMs in early iPhones, and then maybe dozens in modern ones. More in anything with an SD card slot, as SD card typically contain an Arm or a few of them to manage the blocks of storage, and other ARMs in the interface are talking to those ARMs.

Wheels within wheels: multiple very similar cores, running different OSes and RTOSes and chunks of embedded firmware, all cooperatively running user-facing OSes with a load of duplication, like a shell in one Javascript launching Firefox which contains a copy of a different version of the same Javascript engine, plus another in Thunderbird, plus another embedded in Slack and another copy embedded in VSCode.

Insanity. Make a resource cheap and it is human nature to squander it.

[FrostViper8]

I've found that Gnome works about as well as other "lighter" desktop environments on some hardware I have that is about 15 years old. I don't think it using a JS engine really impacts performance as much as people claim. Memory usage might be a bit higher, but the main memory hog on a machine these days is your web browser.

I have plenty of complaints about gnome (not being able to set a solid colour as a background colour is really dumb IMO), but it seems to work quite well IME.

> Or you can ignore all that nonsense and run openbox and native tools.

I remember mucking about with OpenBox and similar WMs back in the early 2000s and I wouldn't want to go back to using them. I find Gnome tends to expose me to less nonsense.

There is nothing specifically wrong with Wayland either. I am running it on Debian 13 and I am running a triple monitor setup without. Display scaling works properly on Wayland (it doesn't on X11).

[lproven]

> I find Gnome tends to expose me to less nonsense.

IMHO, I find the reverse. It feels like a phone/tablet interface. It's bigger and uses way more disk and memory, but it gives me less UI, less control, less customisation, than Xfce which takes about a quarter of the resources.

Example: I have 2 screens. One landscape on the left, one portrait on the right. That big mirrored L-shape is my desktop. I wanted the virtual-desktop switcher on the right of the right screen, and the dock thing on the left of the left screen.

GNOME can't do that. They must be on your primary display, and if that's a little laptop screen but there is a nice big spacious 2nd screen, I want to move some things there -- but I am not allowed to.

If I have 1 screen, keep them on 1 screen. If I have 2, that pair is my desktop, so put one panel on the left of my desktop and one on the right, even if those are different screens -- and remember this so it happens automatically when I connect that screen.

This is the logic I'd expect. It is not how GNOME folks think, though, so I can't have it. I do not understand how they think.

[FrostViper8]

> IMHO, I find the reverse. It feels like a phone/tablet interface. It's bigger and uses way more disk and memory, but it gives me less UI, less control, less customisation, than Xfce which takes about a quarter of the resources.

I've used Xfce quite a lot in the past and quite honestly most of the "customisation" in it is confusing to use and poorly thought out.

I've also found these "light DEs" to be less snappy than Gnome. I believe this is because it takes advantage of the GPU acceleration better, but I am not sure tbh. The extra memory usage I don't really care about. My slowest laptop I use regularly has 8GB ram and it is fine. Would I want to use this on a sub 4GB machine, no. But realistically you can't do much with that anyway.

Also Gnome (with Wayland) does a lot of stuff that Xfce can't do properly. This is normally to do with HiDPI scaling, different refreshrates. It all works properly.

With Xfce, I had to mess about with DPI hacks and other things.

> Example: I have 2 screens. One landscape on the left, one portrait on the right. That big mirrored L-shape is my desktop. I wanted the virtual-desktop switcher on the right of the right screen, and the dock thing on the left of the left screen.

> If I have 1 screen, keep them on 1 screen. If I have 2, that pair is my desktop, so put one panel on the left of my desktop and one on the right, even if those are different screens -- and remember this so it happens automatically when I connect that screen.

I just tried the workspace switcher. I can switch virtual desktops with Super + Scroll on any desktop. I can also choose virtual desktops on both screens by using the Super + A and then there is virtual desktop switcher on each screen.

I just tried it on Gnome 48 on Debian 13 right now. It is pretty close to what you are describing.

> This is the logic I'd expect. It is not how GNOME folks think, though, so I can't have it. I do not understand how they think

I think people just want to complain about Gnome because it is opinionated. I also don't like KDE.

I install two extensions on desktop. Dash to Dock and Appindicators plugins. On the light DEs and Window Managers, I was always messing about with settings and thing always felt off.

[lproven]

This is quite interesting. As before, what you find is the reverse of what I find.

> I've used Xfce quite a lot in the past and quite honestly most of the "customisation" in it is confusing to use and poorly thought out.

In places, it can be. For instance, the virtual-desktop switcher: you can choose how many in 1 place, how many rows to show in the panel in another place, and how to switch in a 3rd place. This shows it evolved over time. It's not ideal but it it works.

But the big point is, it's there. I'd rather have confusing customisation (as Xfce can be) than no customisation like GNOME.

> I've also found these "light DEs" to be less snappy than Gnome.

I find the reverse.

> I believe this is because it takes advantage of the GPU acceleration better

Some do, yes. But I avoid dedicated GPUs for my hardware, and most of the time, I run in VMs where GPU acceleration is flakey. So I'd rather tools that don't need hardware for performance to tools that require it.

Here's some stuff I wrote about that thirteen years ago.

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/33987.html

I really have been working with this for a while now. I am not some kid who just strolled in and has Opinions.

> The extra memory usage I don't really care about.

You should. More code = more to go wrong.

When I compared Xfce and GNOME for an article a few years ago I compared their bug trackers.

GNOME: about 45,000 open bugs.

Xfce: about 15,000 open bugs.

This stuff matters. It is not just about convenience or performance.

> But realistically you can't do much with that anyway.

News: yeah you can. Billions have little choice.

The best-selling single model range of computers since the Commodore 64 is the Raspberry Pi range, and the bulk of the tens of millions of them they've sold have 1GB RAM -- or less. There is no way to upgrade.

> Also Gnome (with Wayland) does a lot of stuff that Xfce can't do properly.

I always hear this. I had to sit down with a colleague pumping this BS when I worked for SUSE and step by step, function by function, prove to him that Xfce could do every single function he could come up with in KDE and GNOME put together.

> This is normally to do with HiDPI scaling,

Don't care. I am 58. I can't see the difference. So I do not own any HiDPI monitors. Features that only young people with excellent eyesight can even see is is ageist junk.

> different refreshrates.

Can't see them either. I haven't cared since LCDs replaced CRTs. It does not matter. I can't see any flicker so I don't care. See above comment.

> I just tried the workspace switcher. I can switch virtual desktops with Super + Scroll on any desktop. I can also choose virtual desktops on both screens by using the Super + A and then there is virtual desktop switcher on each screen.

You're missing the point and you are reinforcing the GNOME team's taking away my choices. I told you that I can't arrange things where I want -- even with extensions. Your reply is "it works anyway".

I didn't say it didn't work. I said I hate the arrangement and it is forced on me and I have no choice.

> I just tried it on Gnome 48 on Debian 13 right now. It is pretty close to what you are describing.

It is not even similar.

> I think people just want to complain about Gnome because it is opinionated. I also don't like KDE.

I complain about GNOME because I have been studying GUI design and operation and human-computer interaction for 38 years and GNOME took decades of accumulated wisdom and experience and threw it out because they don't understand it.

> I install two extensions on desktop. Dash to Dock and Appindicators plugins. On the light DEs and Window Managers, I was always messing about with settings and thing always felt off.

So you are happy with it. Good for you. Can you at least understand that others hate it and have strong valid reasons for hating it and that it cripples us?

[zozbot234]

COSMIC is gaining ground as a JS-free alternative to current desktops, so hopefully you won't be limited to openbox and such.

[creshal]

Openbox isn't limiting me, Wayland still has no advantages for what I do with desktops.

[pjmlp]

As written on a sibling comment, maybe RAM being hard to get will bring some of that back.

I really needed to save to buy RAM sticks back in the day.

[roywashere]

I am wondering if, with memory and storage prices skyrocketing, there will be more effort on making computing use less resources?

[t-3]

Unlikely. If you can't afford RAM, how can you afford the SaaS contracts that keep devs employed?

[_zagj]

They typically also need GPU acceleration, these days, and that can be an even bigger bottleneck, with the drivers often not supporting older cards.