Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days.
Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB RAM free - Firefox, evolution, gnome-calendar, and gnome-software are the only apps that using more than 100 MB, and none of them are obligatory.
as in, I click "open in new tab", some time later I switch to them... only to get hit with "new tab", even though a moment ago it displayed tab name and I could right click -> bookmark to preemptively copy the address
Bookmarks do not store click history, the trajectory you took to arrive at the page. With tabs, the contexts is a backbutton away.
It can still be a bit iffy when memory's really tight, but even then a simple tab reload is usually enough to fix things.
Any familiarity with Safari and blocking performance? uBlock Origin Lite is a simple option, AdGuard can do more (injection?) though uBO feels more trustworthy still…
Most of the games I play run in 4 GB, but since my Chromebook only has 32 GB of storage, There are some I can't install and I generally only have four or five installed at any given time.
Some time ago I got myself a similarly priced x86-64 Windows tablet on Amazon (Celeron N4020 + 4 GB RAM). I installed Linux Mint on it with a slightly customized kernel (some extra quirks were needed).
I connected an old SSD to it with a SATA2USB adapter, and I use it as a home file server and HTPC. It has a micro HDMI output, and it is connected to my TV. During the day it is playing music non-stop, in the evening it is playing some movies. It has no problem with high bitrate full HD movies, the CPU doesn't even break a sweat. I think it could also play 4K content, if I had any.
(Previously I used a Mac Mini with VLC for this for a few years, but I'm happier with my current setup, it's more stable)
That sounds like an problem Windows could solve.
If people have to buy new PCs, that’s more $$$ for Microsoft.
Since I have a desktop I do use rustdesk way more often to just boot into that.
But you’re doing much better than me.
main trouble to me has been caused by unity games - those are the big ram devourers, even most basic 2D ones (I still don't understand how that happens, why such regression since KSP days)
and plenty of 2D games work perfectly fine (devs really overestimate minimal requirements)
Generally it's probably just bad optimization. But that only gets you so far because Unity's asset streaming is designed to work with level-based games. It will only let you unload assets if you package them per-level and then swap them in and out at load screens between levels. Absolutely useless for games like KSP.
and yet KSP flies fine, while visual novels crash
> I suppose it's limited to very few tabs
Not really. Haven't used it super heavily, but I haven't felt limited by tabs. It can handle multiple YouTube tabs, too.
> Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE
I use sway on it. It's perfectly responsive. I expect i3 with Xorg would also be. Neither count as a DE, but neither does a terminal + tmux.
https://www.doogee.com/products/u10-vip-edition?variant=4431...
If that would be real RAM, and not only swap I'd feel tempted.
Edit: Never mind, already sold out...(meanwhile, 15 minutes, or so)