How Much RAM for a Linux Desktop?

runlevel0 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:49 pm Post subject:

I have 3 Linux boxes at home: The main box (Duron 1.3, desktop SUSE 9.1) is a full-blown Linux system which I use to do from 3D rendering (Blender) to text editing and some little programming (this box does also NATting for the others), I have 768MB DDR 333 on this one.

My wife's SUSE 9.0 box is a Pentium III 700 with an older motherborad which has a 512MB but only recognices ~300MB.

And the last one is my brand new Stage1 optimized Amilo K 7600 Laptop, which
uses 256MB right now, but I have already ordered an extra 512MB SODIMM.

Both, my wife's box and the laptop run quite smoothly, the desktop because she only uses it for email and web surfing.

On the laptop using OpenOffice I can sometimes notices "jumps": The system freezes for seconds and the cursor jumps back to the last place where it was. This was using SUSE 9.1...

With my brand new Stage1 Gentoo 2004.2 install I have already noticed a real improvement in compilation speed compared to a not optimized kernel, no 'jumps' at all. so I would say that you would prolly be all right with 256MB and state-of-the-art CPU and MB.

But remember:

RAM is like sex and money, the more the better.
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MrApples · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 511

so with my running fluxbox or fvwm, and a bunch of gnome apps, all on top of a nitro kernel with some servers, would i need more than 512?
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goulash · Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:07 am Post subject:

im jumping on the 1gb bandwagon

also is the 2600+ a barton core? i thought it was the 2500+,2800+ and 3200+ were carton cores. my friend got a 2500+ mobile and it clocks to 2.4ghz very easily, even beats another mates 3.0ghz p4 with ht

JallaMann · n00b Joined: 15 Sep 2004 Posts: 9 Location: Norway, Oslo

I would say 512mb should be enough. I'm running xorg and fluxbox on a laptop with an amd 1400+ and 384mb ram (16mb used by gfx). Works fine. But if you're going with a dual channel setup, I would say getting 2x256 mb is a waste of ram slots. And afaik dual channel doesnt give that much of an improvement... correct me if I'm wrong

I would give you some numbers from my main computer running fluxbox with 512mb too, but right now I seem to have a memory leak or something

btw, Im new so go easy on me :wink:

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kavau · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Jul 2004 Posts: 87

I have KDE + Firefox + OpenOffice running on 512MB and don't feel like I'm scarce on memory. Just for kicks, I fired up Gimp in addition to the above programs and applied some filters to my 3-4 meg digicam files, but I still don't notice any swapping action.

So I'd say, unless you plan to do something extremely memory intensive such as video editing or plasma physics simulations, 512MB is the right amount these days.

MrApples · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 511

5a\/ag3 · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:56 am Post subject: How Much Ram?

I know I have a Gig of RAM and will be upping it to 2 GB(4 x 512 PC3200) of Ram pretty quick just to keep things running real smooth

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MrApples · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 511

from all this im thinking that i will have no need for anything over 512, even with all of the things i will be running

does anyone disagree with this?
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kavau · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Jul 2004 Posts: 87