Microsoft Edge Will Let You Control How Much RAM It Uses Soon (theverge.com) 62
Microsoft is working on a new feature for its Edge browser that will let you limit the amount of RAM it uses. From a report: Leopeva64, who is one of the best at finding new Edge features, has spotted a new settings section in test builds of the browser that includes a slider so you can limit how much RAM Edge gets access to. The RAM slider appears to be targeted toward PC gamers, as there is a setting in Canary versions of Edge that lets you limit the amount of RAM when you're playing a PC game or all of the time. While the slider lets you pick between just 1GB and 16GB on a system with 16GB of RAM, Microsoft warns that "setting a low limit may impact browser speed."
Zero RAM? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't have a horse in this race because I don't use Windows. But I've heard enough complaints about Edge that I'm sure some users would be happy to allow it no RAM at all so it simply can't run.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Not entirely true, it needs just enough ram to download another browser.
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But dealing with low memory situations seems to be a problem with all modern operating systems, doesn't it? I have to ask why there isn't a mechanism the OS can use to tell applications, "Hey, you're using a lot of memory, and we're low, right now. Can you free some up, please?" I'm a Linux user, so I'd expect that mechanism to be a signal. I don't know what it would be on other operating systems.
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The concept already exist and works (I use it) in qemu ballooning although:
https://www.humblec.com/memory... [humblec.com]
1 GB Minimum? (Score:1)
How about 1 MB minimum?
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How about (Score:1)
Or just buy more RAM.
Solutions for this issue exist.
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This message sponsored by Micron
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For years and years my family got by with laptops with 2 GB of RAM. All the while I was reading about how modern browsers needed at least 8.
To this day I've still only had one computer with more than 4 GB. I don't think I've ever had RAM problems. I don't even create a swap partition anymore.
My only guess is that it's a completely different approach to running a web browser.
After browsers added tabs, I never started opening lots of them at once. Apparently many people leave lots of tabs open they might go b
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You close some tabs
Or just buy more RAM.
Or... how about those being potential options AND allowing people to have granular control over how a program behaves with the rest of the system?
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Edge auto start (Score:4, Informative)
There's an edge auto start on user log on, designed to get edge running so it looks like it pops up immediately when you click it. It does background junk all the time for some reason and does take a lot of memory.
A family member has a 4 GB ram computer with Windows 10 and it was unusable until I found this and stopped it.
I don't remember how much RAM it was taking, but I do expect that when they roll this out, it is automatically set to a reasonable value based on the installed ram. They won't, but they can. And I still hope they do.
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And if you kill Edge from auto-starting, and then try to run it later as a first-time user, it takes a very long time to get to a usable state. Even some of the 8GB systems we have here at work, with SSDs take much longer than one would suspect...
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Thanks for that tip, I just went around to my machines and killed it.
how much? (Score:2)
With 32GB, Windows Uses VM on Boot (Score:2)
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ROFL right? Can you imagine, a computer program accessing RAM? What kind of newb lets software access the system's RAM. Software should only be trusted to swap to disk, lol.
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swap?
Drums were primary storage.
And you had to take into account the timing of the address you needed passing by to read or write!
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Why does Microsoft care so much? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are they collecting data and making money off its sale?
Do you even have to ask anymore? Of course they are.
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I assume the answer is no. Not directly. You use edge because it's already installed, and it starts with Windows starts so it loads blazingly fast. And maybe you don't know about customizing the search engine. So every time you type something your keystrokes go to Bing and your searches go to Bing and they make money from Bing.
And advertisers find out more about you and pay Microsoft for the pleasure.
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Control the browser, control the experience. Remember, type something into Edge that isn't a URL and you end up at bing.com
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I think it's mostly in support of Bing. It could be a big source of revenue for them, if only users wouldn't hate it and do everything they can to avoid using it.
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I don't understand, but why is Microsoft so hell bent on making Edge popular?
Because of the way the Internet is designed to be used by most people: through a web browser.
Are they collecting data and making money off its sale?
Yes, but again, this is about control, not merely silly things like profit.
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The best example is Eight. Nobody was using Windows Phone, and they were afraid that (with smartphones gaining popularity) if everyone kept not using it, Microsoft would become irrelevant, so they used their majority market share on the desktop to force everyone to use their phone OS, by porting over some stuff and turning it into the next version of MS Windows. This was a terrible idea (Eight was so much worse than Seven
Edge users (Score:2)
If you are using Edge, this will definitely help you:
https://downloadmoreram.com/ [downloadmoreram.com]
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Don't be RaaSist.
Who cares if Edge uses a lot of RAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
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If I have RAM to spare, go ahead and use it.
Or, it should take when it needs it, and not force the OS to clean up after avoidable sloppines wherever it may be present in a user level application.
Users shouldn't have to care about micromanaging memory these days.
Maybe if they had more trust - irrespective of if the distrust being expressed is completely justified or not - they wouldn't feel the need. Either way, more options IMO is good.
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well the implied situation here is there is VM pressure. People play games and they have edge running logged into things like discord and stuff, for streaming.
Having some control where you can tell VM system hey look I really really care about this process and its children being very low latency; so hey even if the pages associated with this other thing seem 'hotter' i'd rather they be evicted first.
In practice I suspect most users will shot themselves in the foot with that. What will happen is they will j
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Windows should probably also have a VM system that isn't total pants. I'm sure Microsoft will get right on that and have a fix ready any day now.
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Because architecturally as I understand it, Windows is optimized to assume that the disc is where data resides. Memory is just a temporary convenience. That's why you may have several GB free but the system process is hammering the page file and swapping everything around.
In that case, limiting edge may allow the system to use what edge would have used and reduce swapping.
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Your question presupposes a couple of things:
1. You are actually using Edge as your web browser. For a lot of people this is not the case.
2. Your computer actually has the necessary amount of physical RAM. On a lot of low-end systems (especially cheap laptops) this is not the case.
There are people out there who were scammed into trying to run Windows Ten on a system with 16GB of RAM. (I've even seen one syst
Actually free memory when told to (Score:2)
A minimum of 1 Gig of ram? (Score:2)
What the hell for? It's a damn browser!
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Because we have css3, ecma I think 6 with its whole language engine, images used everywhere instead of text, automatically downloading fonts , another nonsense that I don't remember right now.
And, we don't just have a JavaScript. Dom model, we have jQuery and bootstrap and angular so you're not running just your own code, it's frequently a whole pile of framework nonsense. And we also have gen z who thinks JavaScript is the way you build the website.
If you don't like it, I believe edge is based on chromium,
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Hell, ecma is somewhere between last year's 14 and maybe 15 or 16 now. And don't forget Add-Ons, cache, and history.
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I have a Firefox open with like two dozen tabs, and they are certainly not dealing with lightweight pages. Additionally, there's a load of plugins running that keep the ad flood at bay. The whole deal consumes barely more than half a gig of ram. And frankly, that's already pretty excessive.
Hmm... maybe it IS the load of plugins that keeps the waste of resources by ads out that keeps the ram use down...
Is this just a Windows thing? (Score:2)
RISC OS has RAM sliders since 1987 (Score:3)
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I liked IBM System 36, it allowed you to control the percentage of CPU allocated to any running program.
Mac, too (Score:2)
I think it was a numeric field, but multifinder on Mac also had this in 1987.
(and even before that, with switcher, but that allocated memory between entire system & app bundles, which took away some of the advantage)
Awesome news... (Score:2)
... for all the people seeing their RAM fully utliized but would prefer if 70% was just sitting there idle. Because all browsers will use what is there by default and relinquish it if there is memory pressure, but apparently that's not good somehow.
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70% was just sitting there idle
Citation needed? (Not being used by one proces =/= idle, the OS utilizing memory and other processes, you know, running are things). I question how many repeating this crap even sat through a computer operating system design class.
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All browsers have memory caches and memory pressure monitors that will flush data. If you want a citation just look at the source code of Firefox, Chromium et al or the articles that describe their strategies. RAM sitting around doing nothing is wasted and browsers will opportunistically use it until something else needs it.
0 MB! (Score:2)
I know a way to make Edge use 0 MB/GB of RAM. Same trick works on Chrome and every other rebranded Chrome malware.
I fixed it (Score:2)
I fixed Edge so that it uses zero ram.