this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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8GB on my laptop but shared with a modern browser with 500 tabs open, an editor(/IDE), mail-client and whatever gnome likes to waste resources on (gnome-shell, gnome-software in the background etc). that accumulates to a bit less than 5GB. Plus whatever i currently need open to work on. And a computer needs a bit spare to buffer/cache things.
The pinephone has 3GB of RAM.
It's not nothing. But also not enough to have every other application written in Flutter.
Sounds like matrix client should be the least of your concerns actually. My RAM usage rarely goes beyond 2gb with xfce and firefox. Switching to NetSurf like above comment pointed out is a bit of overreaction actually, Firefox with Ublock Origin and a handful of tabs open will do just well
Did gou look into what takes up the most memory? You could downgrade from the modern browser with 500 tabs to netsurf with 500 bookmarks, perhaps, or similar. Many modern websites don't work there, though.
Instead of Gnome, I'm using Sway, at the moment it's taking up 236MB resident.
Do you need that mail client to run 24x7? It's better for mental health to check mail when you decide (once in the morning), not when some rando wants to sell you cannabis oil (best cure for any ailment!) - or you might find something tiny that checks for email and shows a desktop notification, so you know to launch your mail client.
Alacritty likes to munch memory, Foot takes up much less, but Foot doesn't render some colors correctly, for whatever reason.
Shop around, there are more options than just changing the Matrix client.
Yeah, I know. And I'm scaling down with all of those, too (eventually). It's just ... I have to start somewhere. And I've decided Element is the first to go. Gnome is kind of nice. And works well on a touchscreen. And I sometimes need WebRTC, mic/camera and video in my browser.
I can use a more lightweight browser for my daily use and maybe get organized and close tabs and use bookmarks. I like the concept of tiling window managers, so maybe I'm going for something like Sway next. I've had used Xfce for a bit, but that also uses quite a lot of RAM (for something that claims to be lightweight?). And changing from KDE/Gnome comes with quite a lot of choices for alternative programs and new little helpers to get accustomed to. From the little thing that shows me the time in the US and the weather in front of my own door to the calculator to the default mail client. It's a bit more complicated and just takes a bit of time.
Using mail 24/7 was a bit of an exaggeration. I'm using it in a healthy way. But It is useful to get for example the notification that a parcel is getting delivered today, to talk to companies and people who don't own a proper messenger. At least I'm okay with the 5 spam mails while everybody around me is getting constant notifications because some friend sent some deep motivational quote on WhatsApp.
Thank you all for the suggestions. Now I have to have a closer look at each of them. It's just, I've been annoyed a bit lately. I think 8GB should be plenty and enough to not worry about RAM and just use any application and open as much as you like.
An easy start would be Firefox + tree style tabs + auto tab discard, that way you can have your 500 tabs and keep only N loaded (you choose N).