RAM & Linux

For modern day use, about how much RAM is recommended to run a Linux setup? I have no problem using way more than necessary, but I am a little confused about what is necessary in a modern context because my current laptop is from 2010~2011, and I am due for an upgrade. I'm still in the early stages of planning and any advice/explanations are very very welcome !

 

It depends what Linux distro you are using. Small ones Like TinyMCE and Puppy Linux can run on very little RAM. I have a laptop which ran Puppy with 128Mb RAM, which I later upgraded by adding another 512MB.

If you want one of the larger ones like Ubuntu or Fedora, they often take slightly more, although it can depend on the desktop and which version you want to run. 1 GB is enough to run most basic installs and programs. My work laptop ran Fedora on 1GB initially until I upgraded it to 2GB (you might notice that I like to fiddle with my machines) and I had Lubuntu and Kubuntu on the same machine without problems before I settled on Fedora.

One thing that will affect it is your processor: just as Windows comes in 32-bit and 64 bit versions, so does Linux. In my experience the 32-bit versions seem to run better of machines with less RAM.

If you can give us more details about what machine you're running and the current OS, someone around here can probably suggest something compatible.

 

For most of the main stream Linux distros , about 600mb will do the trick. There are some Linux distros that are more ram hungry and some that are less. It also depends if you are running a 32 bit or a 64 bit version. If your computer can handle 64bits I recommend it.

 

The beauty of Linux lies in the fact that there's a distro to suit everyone's needs. To answer your question, a Linux setup may require as little as 256 MB of RAM. I personally have Puppy Linux installed on an old IBM ThinkPad R40 I had lying around, and am very satisfied with the performance I get.

However, as you mentioned 'modern context', you may be referring to the newer versions of Ubuntu, which feature the unity launcher. These require at least 1 GB of RAM, although my experience has been that at least 2 GB is required for a smooth, stress free experience.

Hope I helped. Cheers!

 

This is a very generic question, first of all, what services and daemons are you going to be running on that Linux machine? You get a lot of RAM back if you remove (carefully) all services that are not used.

What distro? And, more importantly, what desktop and what windows manager?

The best thing you can do is to simply download a bunch of distros, burn them to CDs and test them on your old hardware by live booting them, check if the performance is good enough for you. You can always download previous and older versions of any distros around, that's the best advice.

 

Which services do you have in mind? Most of the ones on a fresh installation are pretty important, I think?

 

It is really up to you to decide the ones that are important or not, of course you have to this carefully, but some candidates to go are: Bluetooth device management if you don't plan to use it, the Braille display management since you are not visually impaired I presume, smbd if you are not going to have shares, telnet, ftp, ldp if you are not going to print, named, and stuff like that, essentially services that are more related to a server installation if you are running a desktop, once again, do it carefully and consider the trade offs. Another consequence of this is that the system will boot faster if you disable these services, just google around to see the ones that you can safely disable.

 

You are going to want at least 2 gigabytes, but you will be better off with 4. For a machine from 2010 or 2011 any modern distribution should be fine with 4 gigabytes. You don't have PAE compatibility issues and have no need for any of the super low ram setups others have mentioned. If you are down near 2 gigabytes rather than 4 I would either upgrade if possible or use something like Xubuntu or even Lubuntu. Trimming services should be left for more advanced users or complex hardware issues.

 

This is true and even after you have installed a Linux distro you can still change your desktop environment and have more or less ram depending on the desktop environment you chose. I have worked with puppy Linux but didn't really like it. It's not as flexible as the other Linux distros, but it is very light.

 

The thing about RAM is that you can't decide how much RAM you need on the basis of the minimum requirements. It all goes down to how much RAM your usage habits take. For modern standards, I would recommend minimum of 8GB of DDR3 RAM which is at least 1600MHz. It is also recommended that you don't spend all the money on a particular piece of hardware. If you are building a new system I would recommend that you build a system with all the components with equal importance. If you over spec one component over the other you will end up bottlenecking your system and you wouldn't be able to utilize the full potential of your computer. Good Luck.

 

Why? Most people never actually utilize that much RAM. If you are gaming or running specialized applications that need it maybe. Also, 8 gigabytes wont matter if the system has a bottleneck at the CPU. Putting a jetpack on granny won't speed her up in the checkout line. She is still granny and she is still going to dig through her coin purse and try to pay with pennies and bits of yarn. I don't think 8 is a minimum for most peoples needs. RAM is cheap right now and it can't hurt, but it won't always help either.

 

Most people have a habit to not close multiple Chrome Tabs while also running a few other applications in the background. Chrome uses a lot of RAM and the System starts bottlenecking the performance once RAM usage hits 75% or more. TO avoid this It is recommended that you buy a minimum of 8GB of RAM. One can do around with 4GB of RAM but it might not be enough at times. I meant that buying an expensive Video Card and getting an ordinary CPU will bottleneck the performance of the Video Card. It is always important to balance your funds and buy the system as per your requirements. I meant that most Computers these days have at least 8GB of RAM, not all of them. More RAM is not just for Gamers but also for people who multitask a lot. Putting more RAM won't speed up your computer, but it can avoid you the refresh times for applications whose Cache has been cleared. Hope it Helps.

 

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how RAM is utilized by applications like Chrome and how modern operating systems handle RAM. Memory handling isn't optimized by free space anymore. The notion that software loaded into RAM slows things down is a very dated one and doesn't apply in the case you mentioned. Modern operating systems and most applications treat unused ram as wasted ram, and closing out stuff to free up space doesn't speed things up. You don't need to go around manually removing things from memory, things close as the space is needed for other items. Unless you are into serious video editing or other intensive tasks 8 gigs wont see a performance increase over 4 especially when you are talking about something like web browser tabs.

 

You can get by with 512mb of ram for a system that is just for basic use or is being run as a live CD.

There are distros like PuppyLinux that run fine in 128mb only but they're minimalist (yet powerful) and a user has to know what they're doing and any limitations for installation or use differences more than if they were to use a distro like ubuntu or mint that tries to smooth all of that out in the autoconfigurations and make it easier for people to use it like windows. That, and Puppy Linux is a rare breed (no pun intended) that does things a lot differently like using puplets and letting a user save the entire system into a container file and just plugging only what they need instead of using a traditional file system and linux more people are used to.

You have the option of using even smaller ones that only take 48mb of ram or 64mb of ram like Tinycore Linux, but here again, this is more for advanced users and the general public isn't going to like it or fare well with it like they would a distro that requires more, but makes it easier for them to use at the same time.

8gb is overkill unless your goal is to load the entire system into ram and never use a hard drive at all. Even then, you'll encounter issues depending on the configuration and what you run. 4GB is still overkill for linux systems in most cases.

With a good amount of space as an ext2 or ext3 fs and a nice sized swap file of a few gb, you shouldn't need more than 1 to 2gb usually for a smooth system. Anything beyond that is just bonus, but not needed unless you're doing video. I sound like a broken record for the SSD recommendations, but here again, this will help speed up your system in the event you have low ram but enough space to make a large swap file. Your programs will fall back on the swap file if they run out of ram and the speed won't fall too much.

As mentioned, increasing ram doesn't help as much as decreasing the bottlenecks that are there with or without that ram being present on the system.