While not right square on topic I dont think the parent post was so off target compared to digressions and explorations that are common on discussions here that it warranted an admonishment. I have not "worked on modern browsers" and that seems to disqualify me from expressing an opinion on what I consider using too much as an user of a piece of software.
But this much I can say, that even a few years back I could comfortably use a Linux desktop on 64MB RAM. Now even a Debian box with X would run rather choppily on a system that has 256MB and it is not very clear to me in what exact way is my compute experience better now than the one that I had on the 64MB system. Even those that are considered a lean browser, take upto 200MB of that 256 and still does not work smoothly.(FF 3.5 still does fine on this system BTW). Had my old system been augmented with some 3Gigs of RAM it is possible that its performance would be worse than a modern system of equivalent RAM, but now that it is common for a system to occupy more resources to accomplish the same level of activity is at times an irritant.
The usual counterargument is that RAM is cheap and one should just go and buy some or suffer otherwise. I think it is this assumption that is made or a requirement that is imposed by the newer versions of software that GP was complaining about.
"Comfortably use" my eye. Web browsers have always been bulky by the standards of their day. I remember using IRIX on a 64MB SGI Indy and cursing. It thrashed swap furiously with Netscape 4.
Today's agony always seems new and fresh, but it never is. I still have some of those old systems sitting around to remind me. The "good old days" were pretty miserable.
Today I have Linux and Firefox and the exact same problems -- in 1G of RAM, which is a comparably low-spec system today to what the Indy was back then. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
But this much I can say, that even a few years back I could comfortably use a Linux desktop on 64MB RAM. Now even a Debian box with X would run rather choppily on a system that has 256MB and it is not very clear to me in what exact way is my compute experience better now than the one that I had on the 64MB system. Even those that are considered a lean browser, take upto 200MB of that 256 and still does not work smoothly.(FF 3.5 still does fine on this system BTW). Had my old system been augmented with some 3Gigs of RAM it is possible that its performance would be worse than a modern system of equivalent RAM, but now that it is common for a system to occupy more resources to accomplish the same level of activity is at times an irritant.
The usual counterargument is that RAM is cheap and one should just go and buy some or suffer otherwise. I think it is this assumption that is made or a requirement that is imposed by the newer versions of software that GP was complaining about.