Re: [RFC] VM: I have a dream...

[Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>]

On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 05:01 +0000, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > > Mozilla / Firefox / Opera in particular.  300MB is not funny on a
> > > laptop which cannot be expanded beyond 192MB.  Are there any usable
> > > graphical _small_ web browsers around?  Usable meaning actually works
> > > on real web sites with fancy features.
> > 
> > "Small" and "fancy features" are not compatible.
> > 
> > That's the problem with the term "usable" - to developers it means
> > "supports the basic core functionality of a web browser" while to users
> > it means "supports every bell and whistle that I get on Windows".
> 
> As both a developer and user, all I want is a web browser that works
> with the sites I visit, and performs reasonably well on my laptop.
> 
> I know there are fast algorithms for layout, for running scripts and
> updating trees, and the memory usage doesn't have to be anywhere near
> as much as it is.
> 
> So it's reasonable to ask if anyone has written a fast browser that
> works with current popular sites in fits in under 256MB after a few
> days use.
> 
> Unfortunately, the response seems to be no, nobody has.  I guess it's
> a big job and there isn't the interest and resourcing to do it.
> 

What's wrong with Firefox?

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rlrevell  6423  6.7 16.7 167676 73804 ?        Sl   Jan25  79:41 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -a firefox

73MB is not bad.

Obviously if you open 20 tabs, it will take a lot more memory, as it's
going to have to cache all the rendered pages.

Lee