Hope to satisfy two questions here in one attempt
1. Why is Andy-1 using an 8GiB laptop when his 3GiB laptop runs fine?
2. Is buying more RAM a waste of money for post 2008 computers?

A bit of history is required….
As a design engineer using 3D CAD workstation towers, lost in my 3D ether just like the Matrix films, I care not about the workstation, operating system, cpus or RAM – as long as it works I don’t give a **** It was just a tool to me. I knew nothing of Linux.

However working freelance around England, Europe, Scandinavia and China a laptop became essential to demonstrate my designs and inventions so I bought a new HP G60 3GiB Win-Vista laptop which was capable of running 3D CAD SolidWorks and headed over to China and Scandinavia – great.
Later I began to hate the HP because Win-Vista Home Premium plus AntiVirus was bringing it to a standstill and then it was announced that Vista was at EOL – RIH: Rest in Hell…

Not knowing any different I decided to replace the HP with something else; anything else would be great; much better than using local library computers for getting online.
The refurbished 2013 Dell Latitude E6420 i7 8GiB was bought from a local second-hand shop specialising in business computers, mainly Apple, and the Dell was the cheapest laptop in the shop plus I had used Dell CAD workstation towers for years, so liked the brand. I bought it on condition that it would have Linux dual booted alongside the Win10-Pro. I had not a care of how much RAM it had – just wanted to get away from Vista and HP notebook that had become unusable. I even accepted the US keyboard..! It came with ubuntu v16 so I bought Linux Format magazine – “ubuntu the complete guide.” Bought more Linux Format magazines with DVDs packed with Distros and began checking them out.
Had the brainwave to rescue that hated HP Vista laptop by installing Trisquel v8 Mate – Wo; this is better than buntu on the Dell i7…! Against all advice I wiped the Dell and installed Trisquel-mini and then installed a shedload of software – Wo, it was just so fast it was instantaneous…! My miniMAX brand was born.

Is buying more RAM a waste of money for post 2008 computers? My 2008 HP G60 with just 3GIB RAM running AntiX-22 Full LXDE with LO, Gimp, Hardinfo, Drawing, video making and video-editing software added runs superbly without a glitch - it is my everyday machine With LO Writer file open for editing it will easily play three web page videos at the same time – one in HD and recording screencast video of it all live, using just 1.56GiB RAM of my 3GiB. Never seen Swap used or getting close
I do not know about you; but my 72 year old brain can’t take in three videos at the same time whilst editing a document in LO Writer and managing a live screencast video recorder. Let alone firing up M.A.R.S. A Ridiculous Shooter game, to show off…!

I prepared an old Toshiba Satellite laptop to be gifted for a local school which only had 2GiB RAM – Trisquel v9 worked faultlessly on this old machine.

“According to the Phoronix reader involved with the Le9 work, he's reportedly able to run Mozilla Firefox with 37 tabs as well as having Skype, Discord, two PDFs, and LibreOffice all running on an aging decade old system with just 2GB of RAM.”

It is obvious to me that three GiB RAM is all that is required to run a 2008 laptop-computer efficiently with a good Distro+DE or WM or 4GiB if you insist on an inefficient Distro+DE. Far better to spend your money, £20 on a SSD drive to replace the HDD and get the read-write speed advantage so software and boot-up load much faster.

Hot tip…. AntiX-22 Full will run with the kernel of your choice on your new computer.

No, depends on what you are doing, what DE or WM you are running. Ever use google maps for 20 min, and watch the RAM fill up with those large maps? Also you'll need RAM for a virtual machine. Most computers from 2014 or so will have at least 8GB.

If you run fluxbox, and all that you do is read web pages, compile a few smaller programs, get mail, etc. Then 4 GB of RAM will work for you. It won't work if you are trying to run windows in a virtual machine. I'm not sure that's enough to compile firefox or chromium from source.

You can also make a RAM drive and run programs from it, if you have it.

Yes I use google and OpenStreet maps without problem - easier than watching three web videos at the same time and recording a screencast video of it live.

AFAIK Most computers on sale in 2014 had less than 8GiB RAM - where did you get your figures from? - unless spending $1,300 or more - 2014 Dell Latitude E7440 14-inch 1080p display with a Gorilla Glass touchscreen, a fast 256GB SSD paired with Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM for $1,340...

I am very sure your average linux user is NOT going to be compiling anything from source code.

Tails+Tor works fine on HP G60 RAM - been doing so for years. No Problemo

Are you seriously making this claim? Please tell me that is not your actual opinion.

1 members found this post helpful.

What do you mean by "average linux user"?

Average Linux user here.....

I use 2GB ram (no swap) machines online (modern Firefox) without any problems, have used 1G ram with 2GB swap & Firefox before.

I'm running a dual core 1.2GHz thin client with just 1GB ram (no swap), & with this & Dillo, can access nearly all websites I regularly use.

I do these things just for fun, because I can....

My main machine has 4GB ram - it does everything needed - I did buy an 8GB ram machine, but it's sitting idle at the moment, because it just isn't needed yet....

1 members found this post helpful.

My house is littered with oldies from 2G to 10G RAM machines. Just bought a 4K smart TV, so I guess that's enough for me. I am just a 'consumption' type of user, never 'create' anything.

But this article whet my appetite for an upgrade.

I've given away, recycled all my older machines. Now the 'oldest' machine has only 16GB of RAM (my minimum). RAM is 'cheap' no reason to 'skimp'.

4 members found this post helpful.

Yo fatmac - you're the man..! Perhaps Sensible Linux User too No need to brag or bling up
I too have an 8GiB Dell sitting idle at the moment running Debian+LXDE.
It was running Zorin+Gnome without issue - never seen 3GiB RAM used even when video editing.
Have you ever seen 3GiB RAM being used on your 4GiB machine?

Have fun - Cheers

I don't think that I personally have seen much more than 1GB of ram used at any one time, but I haven't bothered looking, just as long as things are working as they should.....

1 members found this post helpful.

We use a build server with 80 cores and 768 GB RAM, but probably I'm not an average linux user.
Lot of games require definitely more than 1GB RAM.
Lot of scientific or video/audio editing and graphic/drawing tools require more than 1GB RAM.
What is/Who is an average linux user? Andy-1 alone?
(from my side if you want to use your box for almost anything you will need definitely more than 1 GB RAM)

2 members found this post helpful.

@pan64

Just a small correction - I have 4GB ram - but I don't see any more than around 1GB of it ever being used at any one time.

I often use machines with just 2GB ram, which is more than ample for my usage.

Right now on my 'general' purpose box, I see the following:
That's with just a few apps open (firefox, thunderbird, FreeCad) and a Windows VM running. Nothing special, yet 7.5G consumed.

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You know I have an RPi2, RPi3, RPi4, desktop, laptop, and also ESP8266 and each has its own purpose (not to speak about tablets and phones). I don't think there is such a thing as an "average linux user".

Me too and more. But mostly run them headless. So memory use is way 'low'. With 1GB, the machines are simply 'swimming' in memory. Not sure how to use it all....

I too don't know what the 'average user' looks like ... when it comes to Linux computer users...