Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great.

What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

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roryirvine an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Browsers and anything electron-based are your enemy.

Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days.

Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB RAM free - Firefox, evolution, gnome-calendar, and gnome-software are the only apps that using more than 100 MB, and none of them are obligatory.

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NooneAtAll3 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

it's probably the "you only notice when it doesn't work" situation, but my experience with firefox on ram limit has been a lot about tabs forgetting the url in them

as in, I click "open in new tab", some time later I switch to them... only to get hit with "new tab", even though a moment ago it displayed tab name and I could right click -> bookmark to preemptively copy the address

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nine_k an hour ago | parent [-]

Try the "Auto tab discard" extension. It allows me to have hundreds of tabs "open" and (in combination with Tree Style Tabs) largely blur the line between "browser sessions" and "bookmarks".

	▲	srean 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Far better than bookmarks. Bookmarks do not store click history, the trajectory you took to arrive at the page. With tabs, the contexts is a backbutton away.

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fwip 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Seconding ad-blocking. I have a low-end phone (4GB ram, and a mediatek processor from 2018), and setting up DNS-based ad-blocking made a lot of sites go from unusable to usable.

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not_your_vase an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can't speak for OP, of course.

Some time ago I got myself a similarly priced x86-64 Windows tablet on Amazon (Celeron N4020 + 4 GB RAM). I installed Linux Mint on it with a slightly customized kernel (some extra quirks were needed).

I connected an old SSD to it with a SATA2USB adapter, and I use it as a home file server and HTPC. It has a micro HDMI output, and it is connected to my TV. During the day it is playing music non-stop, in the evening it is playing some movies. It has no problem with high bitrate full HD movies, the CPU doesn't even break a sweat. I think it could also play 4K content, if I had any.

(Previously I used a Mac Mini with VLC for this for a few years, but I'm happier with my current setup, it's more stable)

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singpolyma3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pretty much everything. I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue.

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logicchains 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue

That sounds like an problem Windows could solve.

	▲	BobbyTables2 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Also sounds like a problem they don’t want to solve… If people have to buy new PCs, that’s more $$$ for Microsoft.

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exe34 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have 8GB, which I've had since 2012. Never had a problem - I run a lean Nixos with just xmonad and dmenu, chrome, emacs, and about a dozen open pdfs and video tutorials.

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niekkamer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Same here still use my laptop with 8GB DDR4 with Manjaro running.

Since I have a desktop I do use rustdesk way more often to just boot into that.

	▲	cbdevidal an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Y’all are embarrassing me with Lubuntu and Chrome on a 2013 Dell with 16GB and an SSD. Not fast enough for all I need to do but covers 80% of my needs. It’s my road laptop and the home desktop handles the rest. But you’re doing much better than me.

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nubinetwork an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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NooneAtAll3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

having many tabs is perfectly fine - it's having many *youtube* tabs is troublesome

main trouble to me has been caused by unity games - those are the big ram devourers, even most basic 2D ones (I still don't understand how that happens, why such regression since KSP days)

and plenty of 2D games work perfectly fine (devs really overestimate minimal requirements)

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Rohansi 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

> main trouble to me has been caused by unity games

Generally it's probably just bad optimization. But that only gets you so far because Unity's asset streaming is designed to work with level-based games. It will only let you unload assets if you package them per-level and then swap them in and out at load screens between levels. Absolutely useless for games like KSP.

	▲	NooneAtAll3 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Absolutely useless for games like KSP. and yet KSP flies fine, while visual novels crash

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throwaway27448 8 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Frankly if you don't need a web browser (or electron), what WOULD require that much memory? Video and photo editing maybe? Postgres? Recompiling the world?