Re: Memory

On 11/17/24 1:38 AM, vallor wrote:

On Sat, 16 Nov 2024 06:31:26 -0500, -hh wrote:

On 11/15/24 4:50 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 08:36:19 -0500, -hh wrote:

>
That there's an upward trend isn't what matters:  what matters is
the change over the product's design lifespan.

>
How much of the upward trend the product can cover will limit its
lifespan.

>
Of course.  So then, what is that trend?
>
As I've already said, my observation is that its ~4GB/decade or less.
>
Mainstream users often replace their PCs more frequently, so the
practice of "upgrade at replacement" has replaced component upgrades.
>
For example:
>
Notebook:
2017-present:  Started with 8GB, hasn't changed.
(FYI: likely to replace this machine in 2025).
>
Power desktop:
2012-2022:  Started with 24GB, never changed.
2022-present:  32GB
>
Post your own hardware history for the past decade.

 "The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."

Precisely.  That's why I was speaking in generalities and then
provided a personal anecdote.  You're doing the same here:

I believe I've had two machines this past decade.  The
old one I'd built, had 64GB iirc.  Current one has 258G.

And how many normal people do you know who's home PCs are similarly so equipped?  Particularly non-geeks/gamers who do fine in the 4-8GB range?

RAM is cheap and handy to have around.

RAM has gotten cheaper (& rarely hurts), but when there's COLA boys who are loathe to spend more than $50 for an entire machine, they're not about to drop $1200 for one 128GB stick of DDR5, let alone two.
<https://www.crucial.com/memory/server-ddr5/MTC40F2047S1RC56BR>

By default, Linux
Mint splits the RAM in two, half of it ramdisk for various shared
memory operations.  It's owned by root, but world-writable with
the sticky-bit set...
[stuff]
  ...so you're most of the way to building Linux on your hotrod.

Yes, RAMdisks have been a thing .. for decades.  Initially, manually invoked by the user, later as cache automatically managed by the OS.
Apple's OS X has had automatic management for a decade+; one would watch one's system's swap rate to see if you're significantly enough memory-constrained or not to bother to do anything about it.  Case in point, my system's uptime is 30+ days and total swap used so far is still <10GB.
-hh