Ubuntu-MATE low memory edition

Thoughts & Feedback
1

i hope someday Ubuntu-MATE will release Ubuntu-MATE low memory edition, maybe for low spec PC for 1 or 2 GB RAM ?

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2

Ubuntu MATE requires at least 1GB RAM, 2GB for a smooth experience, so I don't see what the problem is here.

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hi there! :slight_smile:

mostly not the distro is what consuming ur ram but ur browser with those fancy websites... try m.facebook.com and when ur getting the loader for gmail (just delete the end of the address, so leave just gmail.com to get it) and there switch to the simple html version... those will save u a huge amount of ram! ive got 4g ram, im a developer, im using my machine very heavily, but actually fb is the beast that always consumes my ram.... since ive switched to these i have much more time for myself. like they wont beg me all the time with their crap :smiley: ive got my phone next to me that vibrates on incoming messages if im in the middle of an important conversation :smiley: there are a few glitches, but i can live with them, in worse case i can switch back for a fast task and feel the difference how it consumes my life til my ram doesnt say its enough fun for that round... a pro tip: use tab+enter for sending messages there, as enter wont help u. theres no javascript on it at all! so cool! :smiley: in gmail, there shoud be a bit, as i get a dropdown menu on type for contacts when i write a letter... for yt, there is youtube-dl, but im still not that far from the convenient world :smiley:

i hope these can help u, bests! :slight_smile:

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4

Ubuntu MATE's goal is not to be a distro for low power machines, however it works well as such.

I regularly use MATE inside virtual machines with 1 or 2 CPU cores and 2GB of RAM. It won't run the latest game, but I do development work on them without issues.

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I've installed MATE 32 bit on an atom with 2 GB RAM and recently (last Christmas) installed MATE 32 bit 18.04 on a couple of Pentium laptops w 2 GB RAM that ran quite nicely. Slow but steady.

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thanks alot for all comments!

7

Necroing this a bit, but like vkareh I run several MATE VMs, and the base memory use of them is just as good as (bare metal) Ubuntu was a decade ago:

$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3.8Gi       356Mi       3.0Gi       2.0Mi       549Mi       3.3Gi

That's less than Chrome takes with one open tab. :slight_smile:

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Hi @arQon, just wondering what version you're using and if you did anything to get that low? Thanks

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That one was from 18.04, because my real VMs are 16.04 and full of stuff running on them, whereas the 18.04 one only had caja and a couple of terminals in it while I fixed one of the themes GTK3 had broken. :slight_smile:

I've done very little to that install, because I "don't care" about it enough to bother - probably just killing off a couple of autorun apps that aren't relevant to me (like the nvidia one) and snapd, but that's about it.

My HTPC (which also isn't optimised) clocks in around the same level IIRC. Are you seeing much more than that on yours, or are you just wondering how much work it is to get UM to a "small" runtime footprint?

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As an example the current 19.10 build clocks in at with 437Mi on my old test laptop, being used with a couple terminals and caja open. This is still a development build so keep that in mind.

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I currently run Ubuntu MATE on my laptop which has 2GB of RAM at the moment. I usually only use 600MB-900MB of RAM just piddling about on the desktop, mail client running and everything. I can easily use the web browser and have apps like Telegram, Discord, and Signal open. While I don't think Ubuntu MATE is targeted at 'lightweight' or anything, it certainly is a smaller footprint than most systems would have. 1GB is a stretch, but it's more than great on a 2GB machine!

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