Linux is already pretty decent on memory even with a DE like gnome/cinnamon running. I have an 15 year old laptop with Cinnamon / Arch and it uses 700-800MB once booted.
Frequently the issue isn't memory (I've maxed the memory out at 8GB).
Older systems have issues with composing the web pages itself. A lot of people blame JS, but a lot of the time JS isn't the issue e.g VSCode & Discord runs nicely on the laptop.
e.g. YouTube has a feature called ambient mode, this adds like a white gradient around the video element. On old intel iGPUs this absolutely wrecks video playback performance and you get about 15FPS video. Turning this off the video plays smoothly. The backdrop IIRC is a CSS gradient, the GPU/CPU doesn't have the grunt to render the backdrop gradient with the video on top at a smooth FPS.
So while you might have the memory for the extra tabs, browsing can be a sluggish experience because the GPU/CPU just can't execute the code on the page well.
Frequently the issue isn't memory (I've maxed the memory out at 8GB).
Older systems have issues with composing the web pages itself. A lot of people blame JS, but a lot of the time JS isn't the issue e.g VSCode & Discord runs nicely on the laptop.
e.g. YouTube has a feature called ambient mode, this adds like a white gradient around the video element. On old intel iGPUs this absolutely wrecks video playback performance and you get about 15FPS video. Turning this off the video plays smoothly. The backdrop IIRC is a CSS gradient, the GPU/CPU doesn't have the grunt to render the backdrop gradient with the video on top at a smooth FPS.
So while you might have the memory for the extra tabs, browsing can be a sluggish experience because the GPU/CPU just can't execute the code on the page well.