On 20/11/11 20:31, Tim Connors wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2011, Julien Goodwin wrote:
On 20/11/11 19:33, Leigh Sharpe wrote:
I'm about to set up a new linux box, but not all of the bits have arrived yet. I currently only have 512MB of RAM in the machine, but ultimately, it will have at least 2GB, possibly 4.
er, RAM is now $10/GB. I see no reason for using anything less then 8 or 16.
Um, mobos that can only fit 4GB?
Either they're single stick mobo's for compact systems, or you should upgrade.
Laptops that are new can barely take many more. Still. Stupid market only wanting Windows 32 bit.
My (now four year) old T61 could take 8GB (except it overheated, 6GB was reliable).
The upgrading treadmill that crappy developers force upon us because they can't be bothered to write efficient programs anymore are a great cause of the wastage that modern society suffers from. I keep buying machines that are maxed out with memory at purchase time, but a few years down the track are suffering with a workload that doesn't seem like it should be all that different. Meanwhile, I can't just upgrade ram, because the mobo is already maxed out. I have to upgrade the whole computer despite the rest of it still working well (partly because I've been able to incrementally improve bits of it as bits improved).
I will say that some of this is new algorithms that are only practical with large amounts of RAM, some of the simulation stuff we use in Google NetOps is like that.
'course, the linux VMM sucks mightily. I would have upgraded to kFreeBsd by now if I didn't want to run a proprietry web browser that isn't built for kFreeBsd+debian. Actually, that webbrowser is the primary reason why I run deeply into swap. But it copes better than firefox even after it repeatedly finally allegedly solves that old memory leak problem once and for all.
Opera doesn't do that, and as it's the only proprietry browser I'm aware of on Linux I
Two of my three laptops have 8GB (both T410's, it's the most they'll do), the last is my occasional mac which only has 2GB (can take 4, but it's due for replacement). My desktops one has 12, one 24 (both are triple channel Intel machines). My personal servers are all at 8GB as they're older machines (except for a HP MicroServer used as a NAS which I've yet to upgrade from 1GB).
I don't want a desktop because I want my electricity usage to be below a constant 60watts. My 2 laptops and a small pile of external disks manages this according to my UPS.
I only run a desktop at work because I'm forced to, and my one at home is for games. Haven't done proper power measurements on my servers though, but I do everything possible to keep the power usage down, as that keeps the heat down.