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2 yr. ago

  • hcaptcha is almost entirely AI generated content these days.

  • So their tactic is boasting about breaking mods and making idle threats to try and scare normies while doing what they've been doing, applying fixes and having new modded versions come out that work just fine?

    They did this same thing saying they'd ban people for blocking ads a while back, also astroturfed to hell on Reddit trying to scare people. Ultimately nothing really came from it except a whole lot of fear mongering.

  • Disagreed, memory Limiting definitely helps with over-consumption. Can't consume all the RAM when you only have access to 8GB of it.

  • There’s a difference between “free” memory, and “available” memory.

    I agree with this, and I'm sure most people complaining about Firefox or Chrome's abhorrent memory usage would too. The problem with most browsers is that they eat up the available memory and often do not give it back. So you end up with situations where you're running low on available RAM even though you have 32GB installed.

    ​

    Buy the memory, use as much of it as you can, as often as you can. Go wild with it. Enjoy.

    Sure, if you release it when not using it, otherwise unlimited RAM privilege revoked. Memory leaks suck and when they chew up all your RAM and they continue to happen, offending apps should either be no longer used, or limited to their minimum necessary RAM requirements to limit the damage they'll do.

    Hence why I capped Firefox at 8GB, anything more would be wasted when it inevitably leaks. ::: spoiler Desktop file to limit Firefox to 8GB of RAM

     
        
    [Desktop Entry]
    Version=1.0
    Name=Firefox RAM limit 8GB
    GenericName=Firefox Ram limit 8GB
    Comment=Limit RAM for Firefox to 8GB;
    Exec=systemd-run --user --scope -p MemoryLimit=8G firefox
    Icon=firefox
    Type=Application
    Terminal=false
    Categories=Utility;Development;
    StartupWMClass=Firefox
    
    
      

    :::

  • Browsers have a really hard time with the last part. Hence why I recommended limiting it to something more manageable, that way it doesn't chew up everything available.

  • I guess with a small amount of tabs it can work better, but with 400 tabs and 12 extensions it definitely does struggle. When I first used the .desktop files to limit the ram I accidently set it at 1GB and everything started lagging and freezing in Firefox, it really didn't like it. At least I learned that the RAM limiting method I found really did work because of that.

  • Even if the extension is well made, they can still get overwhelmed sometimes, e.g. ublock origin on sites with very aggressive ads.

    Maybe that's part of the issue, I've seen uBO say it blocked 8K+ ads on certain sites.

    That being said, browsers are very complicated and the fact they all heavily use sandboxing now (as they rightfully should be), I guess I’m not surprised where they don’t function as intended in various use cases.

    Yeah that's very true, Browsers these days are becoming more like virtual machines. I guess it makes sense you wouldn't give all your RAM to them just like you wouldn't give all your computer's main RAM to a Windows VM.

  • Oh that's cool, I guess it makes sense since it's the first search result. I'm glad I could help.

  • Mine is 32GB and Firefox as consistently and repeatedly refused to release the excess RAM back into the pool. So it doesn't work out as well in practice as it does on paper. I would agree that 16GB is the bare minimum though and if you have less you absolutely should get more if you can. Firefox needs at least 8GB to run smoothly, but a system that only has that amount or less will be bogged down by Firefox alone.

  • Even if it doesn't eat that much if it latches on to a portion of Memory and won't give it up unless killed that's still bad, and would be considered wasted as nothing else can use it for anything.

  • Somehow I don't really agree with that theory when Firefox was chomping down on 31.5GB of RAM and causing other things to crash or slow down (crashed Gnome shell a few times which was fun), as well as crashing often itself. When I limited the RAM to 8GB using the method outlined in my other comments all the mentioned issues went away. It would run smoothly, and old tabs would just unload, something which didn't happen before. And most of all, everything else ran smoothly without issues or hiccups.

    Moral of the story, when apps leak RAM, limit their RAM. RAM held by apps and not being released is just as wasted as if it wasn't used at all, because chances are it isn't being used at all, and isn't able to be used.

  • If an app allocates it and ever uses it and refuses to give it up unless killed that can be considered wasted. It's called a memory leak and they can be really bad, especially when they consume a lot of memory, as that memory might as well be empty but is being held hostage by other apps.

    If they released RAM then whatever amount they were using wouldn't be wasted and if more is needed they'd simply release it to free up resources. That hasn't been happening though, and most modern Browsers are notorious for consuming massive quantities without releasing it back to the pool.

    In that case with the presence of Memory leaks being considered, and the fact that they continue to not be fixed, the acceptable amount of RAM a browser should be using (should even have access to) is the minimum necessary to run smoothly. From my testing with Firefox that seems to be 8GB. 4GB caused many websites to struggle. Such an arrangement ensures that even if a Browser begins eating RAM it won't eat up all the RAM and cause issues, worst that'll happen is that it itself will crash from eating all the 8GB it was allowed to access.

  • I tried that but I found that its effects on long term memory leakage weren't adequate for me, and it still consumed way too much RAM. Which is why I just decided to limit RAM for Firefox. It achieves a similar effect as the browser unloads tabs when it runs low on memory, it just doesn't wait until it's using 31GB of RAM and instead just uses up to 8GB (which is what I capped it at) before unloading tabs.

  • That's why I just prefer to limit the RAM available to the browser to an amount that I feel is necessary for good performance while not so much that it causes issues with other things running. To some people that might sound like a bad or stupid idea but think of it this way. You just said that modern browsers are complex and resemble their own Operating System, right? Well if you were running a VM you probably wouldn't give the virtualized OS complete access to all your RAM, that's asking for the VM to crash or freeze your PC. So why should general practice be any different for a browser then, they may be less aggressive than a Kernel managed VM but they can still be problematic when they eat to much RAM. Which is why I choose to limit mine so it doesn't get more than 8GB, which I feel is perfectly reasonable on most systems where that's half of all the memory available, and even on bigger ones you're not missing out on much. Firefox performs just as well with 8GB as it does with 16GB, but with 16GB it'll eat way more than it uses.

    Here's the script I used. Should work for most linux users. I don't know how to do it on Windows since I don't use Browsers there for long enough periods for this to become problematic.\

    ​

    CC: @Badabinski@kbin.earth

  • I think that's precisely why limiting RAM on apps like Chrome or Firefox is so necessary, these apps never release their RAM when they are supposed to, they hoard anything that isn't free and don't give back when it's needed, which is why in the reply to the top comment I shared a desktop entry to limit RAM on Firefox or whatever app you so choose.

  • Having programs steal or sit on RAM without using it is never a good thing. That's why it's called a memory leak, because it's as if the free memory is leaking away. And it gets deprived from other apps that might need it more than Firefox or chromium does.

    Your idea only works if programs actually take only as much ram as they need and give it back when done, but they don't do that, they usually sit on it until it's pried from their cold dead fingers. That's what memory leaks are, and modern browsers these days are extremely prone to them.

  • Most browsers these days have issues with high RAM usage, and memory leaks to. I'd recommend trying to limit the RAM of the browser, it stops it from eating up so much.

    Here's how I did it on linux. I'm sure there's a way to do it if you're on Windows though (might not be as good though).

    This is a script to limit Firefox to 8 gigabytes of RAM, you may change it lower or higher depending on what your needs are by changing the number from 8 to whatever else you'd like. Fair warning though setting it too low will cause Firefox to lag very badly, and will crash chromium browsers outright (Ask me how I found out).

  • Which addon do you use to provide this functionality? I use the clipboard history addon in gnome.

  • Some people might say that that is worse but it's actually not as bad since they are still less readable than the clipboard on Most devices which is unprotected memory.

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  • Many Steam games don't have DRM either. Just no nice installers like with GOG. Ones which have Steam launch requirement can be launched without it via Steam Emulators or custom SteamAPI.dll