In this economy?
Great move in these times where RAM is cheap and widely available
I just checked Woot.com and you can get a refurbished Thinkpad with 16gb of RAM for $230. And there’s a scratch and dent Dell netbook with 8gb of RAM for $60.
So basically the system requirements of Chrome.
Please everyone read or at least skim articles before posting. The article literally says, that it’s “an honest bump” to allow typical usage like web browsing and multitasking.
Ubuntu experts at OMG Ubuntu characterize the latest revision in RAM specs as “an honesty bump.” In other words, the core OS isn’t really more demanding on system resources this time around, but Canonical recognizes that with the latest Gnome desktop, modern web browsers, and typical multitasking workflows, users should look at a minimum of 6GB of RAM.
Please everyone read or at least skim articles before posting.
NEVER!
But that requires actually READING 😖 /j
I’m concerned about in-system bloat because I read the linked article.
Rather, it’s more of an honesty bump. Components that make up the distro – the GNOME desktop and extensions, modern web browsers (and the sites we load in them) and the kinds of apps we use (and keep running) whilst multitasking are more demanding.
The desktop itself isn’t the only reason that you need more RAM, but it’s definitely one of them.
They’re raising it because of RAM needs of browsers and GNOME.
If you’re a shell nerd like me, you’ll still be fine running it on a potato.
A full potato? Lol, when I was young I had nothing but a french fry, scavenged from a McDonald’s bin.
You had McDonalds? That was just a farm in my day. Eee-eye-eee-eye-oh!
Nah, my village just had the bin
I always thought Gnome 3 was bloated.
Gnome 3 was a fad anyway
It’s an illuminating experience to go to a store with Apple computers with 8GB of RAM on display, and browse to a RAM-heavy unoptimized website like YouTube or even Reddit now.
Open a few tabs.
Open a dozen.
You’d be surprised what a decently coded OS can pull off without compromising on the visuals.
IN THIS ECONOMY???
Worst timing for sure
can no longer say Linux is free
This is not Linux, this is Ubuntu, you can run Linux on the map on the back of a cereal box.
was trying to reference the minimum specs meme for Linux that goes like “Linux: memory (optional)”
I know, right? Read the room!
Assuming around USD $220 for a 16GB kit of DDR5, it now costs $27.50 more to run Ubuntu.
I don’t immediately hate it. It’s been a while since any laptops/prebuilds shipped with less than 8 GB, and there’s distros out there far better suited to running on low power or legacy hardware.
Yeah my old ass laptop as 16GB so this is a non issue.
My older-ass laptop has 2GB, so it’s kind of an issue for me.
(But I never attempted to put Ubuntu on that in the first place. It’s running a much older, purpose-built version of Linux.)
Meanwhile on my raspberrypi 4 running Ubuntu server:
And my tablet running stock Ubuntu:
Wow, it needs more RAM than Windows!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications
No no it doesn’t. It’s spec acknowledges that in addition to your OS you also run applications.
Wow those min specs are pure bullshit. Sure you can run the OS - oh, did you want to do anything else with your PC? Good luck
Funny enough, I installed Win11 on a friend’s HP convertible laptop today.
A 2GHz i3 and 4GB RAM, and it was still entirely usable. Not powerful by any means, but a fine socials browser, YouTube viewer, and document writer.
I’d have preferred to put Debian on it, but it wasn’t my call, so I did as requested.
A 2GHz i3
Strangely, that really does not narrow down which processor it is to me.
Cheap shit from 2014.
Note the spec increase in Ubuntu is partially attributed to GNOME, which is also part of just running the OS before you even open anything.
OK, but oppose to Windows, you can run Ubuntu 24 until 2029. I don’t think many will use a 4 GB notebook (as a notebook and not as a Debian server) beyond that time.
I’m using my 2016 Chromebook with 2GB until it literally dies. (Sucker has 16+ hours of battery life. Pretty nice, actually!)
Last time i checked they still sell a RPi with less than 4GB of ram.
Ubuntu (at least the default wm) runs like shit on rpi. I use Ubuntu everywhere but for small machines I typically find something specific for it.
Sure, but my point was more they still currently sell devices with less than 4GB of RAM so it seems reasonable to foresee people still using them in 2 1/2 years.
sorta funny as 16 is starting to feel cramped but I like headroom.
I haven’t run 16GB RAM SINCE MY 2012 Win8/Ubuntu PC. 3rd gen i7 w DDR3 1600MHz lol.
Now on 64GB 5600MHz and 12th gen i9. No upgrades any time soon.
“Starting to”? 16GB is just a few tabs open for long enough.
Well thats the thing. For a tech person and compared to my peers I use pretty minimal stats. I only started feeling constrained by 8 like late teens and I was fine with 4 in the aughts. I guess my own personal ram usage level has been doubling although the aughts were insane. Having a 1 gig drive was a big deal coming into them and we had ram measured in kilobytes in a lot of our hosts. The pace of tech expansion in the first decade of the millenium is multiples of what we see after.
Yeah that’s fair. My RAM usage is through the roof lately, but it pretty clearly happened when I switched to a multimonitor setup. I’m much more likely to have a lot of stuff in the background now because it’s easier to have a lot open at the same time in the practical sense.
But I was lucky enough to grab a 64GB kit before prices went into the sky. Believe it or not, I was regularly up against the limit when I had 32GB.
Why would 2026 Ubuntu need 6x the RAM that 2018 Ubuntu needs?
Just how much bloat are they bloating, here?
Because websites and browsers have gotten way more bloated. If you don’t need a web browser, you can get by with a lot less RAM.
And the default DE is a JS app that runs in a webview. You know, the same tech stack we make fun of the Win11 start menu for, but for the whole DE.
They’re basically saying “Our software doesn’t need more RAM, but most of what you run on it does, so this is a more realistic expectation for what will make for a good experience.”
Snaps need that to be snappy.
It snaps off your ram sticks
They use a lot more disk do they actually use meaningfully more ram? Other than obviously inherently bloated web tech stuff?
I don’t think so, but to be fair, I’m not using Ubuntu so I can’t tell you first-hand
Really unfortunate seeing GNOME is part of the problem here. Linux desktop environments shouldn’t need to be tied to large RAM requirements, never mind increasing ones, for basic functionality. For example, the Start menu key was introduced by Microsoft in Windows 95, but this toggle still isn’t available in most “light” desktop environments like XFCE.
The MacBook Neo, of all things, is chomping at the heels of the idea that pretty, feature-rich OSes need a lot of hardware to function.
I found a lot of flawed measurements which ended up measuring different things. This seems like a fairly respectable measurement even for being a few years old
https://itvision.altervista.org/linux-desktop-environments-system-usage.html
Simple environments like xfce or mate under X11 are around 600 MB. Gnome X 1300MB Gnome Wayland 1400. Seems pretty clear that gnome is a significant factor in the increase on the other hand most machines now come with 8-16
If you don’t like GNOME, Ubuntu officially supports other, less resource-intensive DEs, like Lubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu
I would prefer something that’s light without compromising on things that Microsoft figured out in the 90s and 2000s, and things that modern Apple computers can pull off now.
Apparently GNOME in particular is having a rough time in general, if other articles from
the same websiteomgubuntu are an indicator, but this seems to be a wider trend in desktop environmentsGnome is Javascript that runs in a webview. It’s the same technology stack that we make fun of with the Win11 start menu.
It’s shit technology. No wonder it requires so much RAM.
Do you actually feel like Windows or Mac are more responsive with the same RAM?
For Macs with 8GB RAM? Yes.
For Windows? It’s way worse in my experience, even with debloat scripts, without opening a single thing.
GNOME isn’t exactly light, is it? And there’s still a few more variants.
The macbook Neo is a pretty powerful laptop, I wouldn’t say its a champion of limited computation software success.
The specs are pretty good, but it’s still only eight gigabytes of RAM total, and a phone processor, and seems optimized for comfort (cool case temperatures) over performance.
When I built my current rig a few years back (when I still used Windows and Photoshop), I said, “RAM is cheap enough, and more is better, but don’t go overboard.”
That’s how I ended up with 64GB of RAM.
