The issue is that browsers don’t release much memory back to the system when it’s needed. I wish they’d work more like the Linux kernel’s VFS caching later, but they don’t (and might not be able to. For example, I do don’t think the Linux kernel has good APIs for such a use case).
Badabinski
Alt account of @Badabinski
Just a sweaty nerd interested in software, home automation, emotional issues, and polite discourse about all of the above.
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Joined 6 months ago
Cake day: June 9th, 2024
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The problem is that the extra RAM used by a browser is held on an exclusive basis and so is not nicely reclaimable by the kernel. I love that Linux caches the shit out of files in RAM, it’s great. It’s also great that it can release that memory when I launch a chundering dumpster fire application that eats all of my RAM. If a browser had been holding that memory, then the godawful Linux OOM killer would have launched, halted all threads on the system, walked the entire process tree, and SIGKILLed something (probably not a browser tab) before letting everyone else resume.
With the way memory is currently managed, a bloated browser is a liability. Cached state needs to be stored in something like a
mmaped file so that the kernel can flush pages out of memory if someone else comes along with amalloc. Alternatively, there needs to be communication between a browser and a userspace OOM daemon. If the system started hitting a soft limit, then the browser could start unloading background shit more aggressively.Free memory is wasted memory, but so is memory that can’t be used for anything else when it’s needed.
0·5 months agoI imagine that part of it comes down to motivation. I pretended to be an adult on a special-interest forum when I was twelve years old because I needed an escape from my miserable existence. At that time, I had no control over my life and every morning I woke up meant I had a new chance for traumatic shit to happen. I desperately needed to be someone else, so I took my time, researched shit, and avoided any conversation where I might be outed. I’m sure I didn’t fool everyone, but I got some shocked responses when I went back as an adult and owned up to it.
Kids doing it for the authority boost or just as a childish fancy will be easier to spot. Kids doing it as a coping mechanism for their horrible lives will probably blend in a lot better.
The issue is that browsers don’t release much memory back to the system when it’s needed. I wish they’d work more like the Linux kernel’s VFS caching later, but they don’t (and might not be able to. For example, I do don’t think the Linux kernel has good APIs for such a use case).