512MB ram is nothing now

2 years ago by Freestylesno to c/technology

512MB was a huge flash drive now it's not enough ram. Turns out Spotify can't open-source Car Thing because it's a potato https://www.androidauthority.com/...

autonomoususer 58 points 2 years ago

No, that's a cope. They just have to include the correct software license text file, like AGPL, when they send us the software.

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corsicanguppy 0 points 2 years ago

that's a cope

A priestly stole? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

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BearGun 5 points 2 years ago

And i think you're a bit behind the times

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cmnybo 43 points 2 years ago

It depends on what you are doing. I've got single board computers running happily with 512MB of RAM. I certainly wouldn't want to try and run a GUI on them though.

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owenfromcanada 29 points 2 years ago

People have been running GUIs on much less for decades--though if you're trying to use something out-of-the-box, anything modern will certainly not do well. But there's tons of RPi stuff that runs on meager specs.

I'd have expected people would use these things for similar projects as SBCs.

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cmnybo 9 points 2 years ago

I used to run a GUI on a Raspberry Pi B+ and it was doable, but that was a decade ago and many programs have gotten a lot more bloated since then. Of course if you are just running your own software, you can optimize it to run with very little RAM.

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Eldritch 6 points 2 years ago

You can do it easily if you aren't running full HD or something heavy. Enlightenment runs great on my Pi B and 2 B.

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bruhduh 11 points 2 years ago

Antix Linux says hi, also remember that gta 5 and Skyrim was running on 512mb shared memory in Xbox 360 and 256+256 vram+ram on ps3

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solrize 6 points 2 years ago

You might not remember that the original Macintosh had 128KB. That's KB with a K.

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nilloc 2 points 2 years ago

Our 90s Mac ran OS 7.6 with 24 MB of ram and a 500MB HD.

Played shareware/warez games pretty well too, even OG Warcraft over 56k dialup direct to my friend’s PC.

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nyan 38 points 2 years ago

What, you mean 640KB isn't really enough for everyone?

. . . I kid, I kid. Still, the CarThing strikes me as more of an embedded-type system. 512MB is generous for devices of that class, and more than sufficient for a carefully-tailored Linux kernel + busybox + another 100MB+ of running software. Potato, yes, but potatoes are a useful food source—just not as impressive as filet mignon.

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sugar_in_your_tea 9 points 2 years ago

Yup, single purpose servers really don't need much RAM. If you just need to stream music, you could use a lot less.

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bruhduh 31 points 2 years ago

Gta 5 was running on 512mb shared ram in ps3 and Xbox 360

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VindictiveJudge 9 points 2 years ago

512 shared on the 360, 256 dedicated RAM and 256 dedicated VRAM on the PS3.

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bruhduh 5 points 2 years ago

Yes, see my other comment in this post, I've mentioned what you've said, however, you should know, ps3 gpu could use both vram and ram but CPU on the other hand didn't, so it's kinda shared actually

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FrozenHandle 5 points 2 years ago

I wouldn't call it running well though. Just barely playable on PS3. It was possible to get into a car, drive down a long, straight road and then crash into an invisible building because some cars were faster than the console could load assets.

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astrsk 25 points 2 years ago

Tell that to the several 2-core 512mb Debian vms in my hypervisor. They have a purpose and they run perfectly fine!

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user224 25 points 2 years ago

I mean, VPSs with 512MB of RAM exist, so surely it's still useful for something.

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sugar_in_your_tea 15 points 2 years ago

Yup, and I use them. 512MB is more than enough for a lot of things.

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WallEx 12 points 2 years ago

Routers with more then 512 megs of ram are pretty new for example

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user224 -4 points 2 years ago

You're referring to dumb home routers right?

Because for example OPNsense recommeds at least 8GB of RAM, though the bare minimum is 2GB.
And even purpose-built enterprise routers are certainly in similar ballpark. BGP will eat that.

I don't think I've seen one of those dumb ones with nearly that much RAM. Usually they're like 16MB/32MB. Guess I'll have to check.

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WallEx 5 points 2 years ago

Im not talking about commercial routers, no.

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sugar_in_your_tea 3 points 2 years ago

My Mikrotik router at home (entry level enterprise gear) has 512MB RAM, and it can do most of what those bigger routers can, just a lot fewer connections.

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WallEx -1 points 2 years ago

Routers with more then 512 megs of ram are pretty new for example

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Drummyralf 23 points 2 years ago

My Synology NAS has 512 MB of ram. She won't be winning any races, but she's a fine beauty. Hits NAS with a wrench

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pineapplelover 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah idk man I had to upgrade mine to the max supported ram (I think 8gb or something) because I run a bunch of services like adguard home and jellyfin on it

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AdrianTheFrog 16 points 2 years ago

A raspberry pi zero 2 w ($15) has 512 MB of ram

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Toes 12 points 2 years ago

I paid $1 per MB for a 64MB usb drive. And that seemed alright when I compared it to a floppy disk.

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JeffKerman1999 5 points 2 years ago

Yeah I remember my uni professor exclaimed "that's a 128mb usb stick? Holy fuck!" Or the 32mb MMC card for my ngage that could hold a whopping whole 10 songs

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rob200 11 points 2 years ago

If you're mostly running Mastodon, and other open source platforms and software particularly with no ads, typically the less demand on your hardware. I use to have a 2 gb ram laptop and it surprisingly was able to do a lot once I got Linux installed. I was able to get ps1 emulators running at full frame rate with 2 gb ram. on the default windows 10 install, good luck getting anything like that out of 2 gb of ram.

Usually what affects the hardware performance is what's running on it. If you stick to 2d sprites, avoid ads and 3D renders, block autoplay gifs and video the better your browsing experience gets. Also block JavaScript.

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tobogganablaze 8 points 2 years ago

Yeah, anything measured in megabyte is "nothing" these days. You'd have to go back quite a bit for 512MB to be considered "huge".

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far_university1990 6 points 2 years ago

L0 cache be like: few hundred kilobyte, take it or leave it

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MonkderDritte 1 point 2 years ago

My efi partition is 512mb. To be on the safe side.

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demonsword 6 points 2 years ago

I suddenly felt so old. My first computer had 8MB RAM... 486 DX2 66MHz

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sugartits 3 points 2 years ago

You decadent young whippersnappers have no idea.

16kb of RAM, z80 CPU. That's how we did it in my day.

You don't know you're born.

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Hadriscus 3 points 2 years ago

Hah ! I had 256 mathematicians perform very simple calculations, 128 horse riders then relayed the results to 512 stone engravers for storage

You kids don't know how easy you have it

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sugartits 1 point 2 years ago

I bow down to you, greybeard

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corsicanguppy 2 points 2 years ago

Tandy model 1 level 2. 2k.

This isn't a contest, but more a support group.

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theherk 2 points 2 years ago

But did it have that sweet, sweet local bus goodness?

Also if it is any consolation, 486DX266 was way after I got my first computer.

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myplacedk 1 point 2 years ago

My first PC was FULL of memory. It had ALL the memory. No amount of money could add more. It had 640KB. It was crazy.

My first computer wasn't a PC, it had 64KB RAM. I never needed more.

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SnotFlickerman 5 points 2 years ago

So it couldn't just be a web based player for something like PlexAmp? Thats literally all I would want it for. Seems like it could do the job it was made for but for another app would be ideal.

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JeffKerman1999 4 points 2 years ago

Maybe it could run some HomeAssistant dashboard?

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TheGrandNagus 1 point 2 years ago

Or show calendar entries/weather for the day.

Anything would be better than landfill.

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Celestus 5 points 2 years ago