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RAM on your main Gentoo box?
Less than 512MiB
2%
 2%  [ 2 ]
512MiB to less than 1GiB
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
1GiB to less than 2GiB
1%
 1%  [ 1 ]
2GiB to less than 4GiB
2%
 2%  [ 2 ]
4GiB to less than 8GiB
12%
 12%  [ 11 ]
8GiB to less than 16GiB
23%
 23%  [ 21 ]
16GiB to less than 64GiB
52%
 52%  [ 47 ]
64GiB or more
6%
 6%  [ 6 ]
Total Votes : 90

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eccerr0r
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 6:26 am    Post subject: RAM on your Gentoo box? Reply with quote

Figure it's about time to have another one of these snapshot polls.

How much RAM in your 'main' Gentoo box?

"main" as in, it must also be able to build binaries :) (so if you don't build binaries on a machine you use, don't count it for now.

Just curious now, how many people run less than 4GB RAM and thus don't need/want PAE on x86 machines, yet most Linux distributions now force it down our throats to cut down on support costs. I suspect the number of sub-4GiB machines are now small, but I could be wrong! But don't worry if you don't use x86, I just am curious of RAM not architecture.

I think my average is now near 4GiB or so, though few actual machines have that much. I have a few with 8GiB and the 1/1.5/2/3GiB machines pull down the average. I don't count the 64/256MiB machines, that's just silly as it can't build all its binaries without OOMing. The 1GiB machine is probably the smallest I run g++ upon...
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John R. Graham
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

When you use a dual Xeon motherboard with three memory busses for each socket, the minimum practical amount is 12GiB but I went for 24.

- John
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nokilli
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Need ram because of this:
Code:
tmpfs /var/tmp/portage tmpfs uid=portage,gid=portage,defaults,size=14G,nr_inodes=500k,mode=700 0 0

That's my 16GB box. Change the 14G to 6G for my netbook with 8G. So far that's been enough to handle every build I throw at it, that includes firefox and chromium (caveat: I haven't updated my netbook in maybe six months so maybe that's changed).

I recently had the opportunity to run a Chrubuntu-mutant on a Chromebook Tegra K1 with only 2GB and I was expecting all kinds of misery but surprisingly my normal stack of ratpoison, emacs, rxvt-unicode and firefox worked very well, albeit the firefox tabs were all documentation and nothing javascript-heavy.

Outside of portage the added ram helps a lot when using kvm to play with cluster stuff. Highly recommended. Would buy more ram again in the future.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've got 20gb of memory in my Gentoo computer. At first, I had 4gb and then bought 16gb to replace the existing 4gb ... but I have actually kept the 4GB!

@John R. Graham, do you use two Xeon in your desktop box ? :D Nice rig I suppose!
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

6 :|
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krinn
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A strange poll eccerr0r, main machine generally also mean "latest", and because of that, people always brought it with more ram.
My "main" have 16gb, while my next best machine have only 3gb.
And the one with 3gb is a Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_E6750_ @_2.66GHz, but when i brought parts i never invest a copper into buying it more ram and the main take the bonus :)
While it would be a shitty 64bits computer, it shine with 32bits (and yeah no PAE of course)
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@eccerr0r, do you really think that PAE brings with it a measurable performance hit? I would expect physical address resolution from page table entries in L1 cache to incur zero performance penalty and the cache hit rate to be extremely high. Note that this is not direct knowledge of the implementation talking but an educated technical gut feel.

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fedeliallalinea
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

desktop 32GB how I manage some virtual machines.
notebook 16GB
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 12:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NAS 2Gig but it is 64bit so PAE is moot
Desktop is 16Gig and equally 64bit
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fturco
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 12:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

  • My main computer (a desktop) has 8 GiB of RAM
  • The other computer (a laptop) has 4 GiB of RAM
  • I also run a Gentoo VPS with 1 GiB of RAM.
Time to upgrade, I know, but I have to hodl my bitcoins, you know... :-)
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1clue
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Main" meaning desktop, or biggest, or newest, or the one you have most contact with, or most critical to getting things done?

I chose my router box. 16g supermicro atom 8 core
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Tony0945
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Smallest is 503MB (was 384 but I just swapped a 256MB stick to replace a 128, two more ordered). It ran quite well on the 3.x kernels (no X) but really slow on 4.x.
One box (server) is 8G, the workstations are 4G, one was 1G but I upgraded it last year. I am planning on buying a more powerful CPU/mobo with 16G to run virtualbox. I've experimented and XP runs fine in virtualbox so I plan to replace the dial booter with a Gentoo with virtualbox.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've always wondered why people buy excess RAM. I just saw someone in some Linux forum bragging his new laptop has 64 GiB of RAM. (He wrote 64g - that would be 64 grams, but I assume he meant GiB). I could not imagine what use would 64 GiB be in a laptop, running Linux. I can understand people buying SUV's and houses they cannot afford, it is showoff, natural part of human nature. There is only small percentage of people able to override their showoff desire, they are the lucky ones and they usually get rich (if they are so inclined). But computer RAM, nobody can see it, why? Lack of technical knowledge? They think more RAM always results in better performance?

My MythTV backend and file server has 16 GiB of ECC RAM, it has RAIDZ-2.
Desktop has 8 GiB, enough to run a VM occasionally and do compiling in tmpfs.
Laptop has 4 GiB, most of it is hardly ever used.
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Naib
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jaglover wrote:
I've always wondered why people buy excess RAM. I just saw someone in some Linux forum bragging his new laptop has 64 GiB of RAM. (He wrote 64g - that would be 64 grams, but I assume he meant GiB). I could not imagine what use would 64 GiB be in a laptop, running Linux. I can understand people buying SUV's and houses they cannot afford, it is showoff, natural part of human nature. There is only small percentage of people able to override their showoff desire, they are the lucky ones and they usually get rich (if they are so inclined). But computer RAM, nobody can see it, why? Lack of technical knowledge? They think more RAM always results in better performance?

My MythTV backend and file server has 16 GiB of ECC RAM, it has RAIDZ-2.
Desktop has 8 GiB, enough to run a VM occasionally and do compiling in tmpfs.
Laptop has 4 GiB, most of it is hardly ever used.
Well for me my old PC had 4gig and that was not enough so when I rebuilt in March I was tempted to go for 32gig but settled for 16. at the moment I regularly use 12gig (nice big simulations, some games etc)
but yes buying vastly in excess of needs is more of an epeen thing.
SOMETIMES it is just deals... about a month after I did my build there was a RAM bundle for not alot more than what I paid but with twice the memory
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eccerr0r
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know for a fact that PAE does incur a penalty and have experimental proof that it does. Indeed L1 will still hit just as often, and as it's probably is the biggest influence to overall speed it will feel it will run just as fast. However the physically mapped L2 needs to be flushed much more often.

Yeah I think as usual for snapshot and for one machine polls are never clear, and yeah it seems that people will pick the biggest machine they own, so I suppose just pick whatever, though I was expecting to ignore rpis unless you actually use its console and self host without a bindist cross compiler elsewhere, machines you don't actually own (i.e., VPS and the like used), and the such. I kind of have the same problem though both machines have the same amount of RAM anyway. The "critical" machine is my server that though desktop capable (it has a full GUI installed and I can/do use it if needed) it's tucked away in an inconvenient spot so I don't use the console very often. It hosts the VM I constantly shell into for mail service, etc. Though I keep firefox updated as often as my workstation, I rarely web browse on it. The main time I use the browser on this machine is to download fetch restricted packages like jdk, etc. as this machine also hosts my portage mirror - though not absolutely necessary that I do it this way.

It looks like most people have gone past the 4GiB mark however, and if still stuck on x86, PAE would be necessary. But everyone's on amd64 for the most part now and PAE is unnecessary.
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Jaglover
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://cl4ssic4l.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/linus-torvalds-about-pae/

Quote:
SOMETIMES it is just deals... about a month after I did my build there was a RAM bundle for not alot more than what I paid but with twice the memory

This may be OK for a desktop, still no good for a laptop. More heat, more power consumption, all in vain.
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1clue
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jaglover wrote:
I've always wondered why people buy excess RAM. I just saw someone in some Linux forum bragging his new laptop has 64 GiB of RAM. (He wrote 64g - that would be 64 grams, but I assume he meant GiB). I could not imagine what use would 64 GiB be in a laptop, running Linux. I can understand people buying SUV's and houses they cannot afford, it is showoff, natural part of human nature. There is only small percentage of people able to override their showoff desire, they are the lucky ones and they usually get rich (if they are so inclined). But computer RAM, nobody can see it, why? Lack of technical knowledge? They think more RAM always results in better performance?

My MythTV backend and file server has 16 GiB of ECC RAM, it has RAIDZ-2.
Desktop has 8 GiB, enough to run a VM occasionally and do compiling in tmpfs.
Laptop has 4 GiB, most of it is hardly ever used.


If I ever get another laptop it will have at least 64g (yes, a typical abbreviation for gigabytes) because I use a ton of VMs and would need to do so also on the road. My current VMs use more than 32g, all used for development or testing of enterprise software.
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eccerr0r
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes PAE was a hack. A slow hack too. But it kept the 32-bit machine going longer. It's pretty neat that it was available when the average machine was less than 128MB.

Linus is right, there's a lot you can't do with PAE, but with PAE you could still keep your disk cache on a separate page and it'd be faster than doing a fetch from disk as well as keep multiple processes running at the same time with their own memory space.

I just was a bit disappointed when trying to boot my 1GB laptop with modern Linux tools and it refused to boot because it did not have the processor PAE flag and may actually have buggy PAE logic.
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Last edited by eccerr0r on Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
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1clue
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought PAE was for a 32-bit OS? I stopped using 32-bit like 5 years ago I think.
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Jaglover
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

1clue wrote:
If I ever get another laptop it will have at least 64g (yes, a typical abbreviation for gigabytes) because I use a ton of VMs and would need to do so also on the road. My current VMs use more than 32g, all used for development or testing of enterprise software.


Correction, g is typical illiterate abbreviation for gigabyte. SI system has unique symbols for every unit, common sense is not to mix them up.
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1clue
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jaglover wrote:
1clue wrote:
If I ever get another laptop it will have at least 64g (yes, a typical abbreviation for gigabytes) because I use a ton of VMs and would need to do so also on the road. My current VMs use more than 32g, all used for development or testing of enterprise software.


Correction, g is typical illiterate abbreviation for gigabyte. SI system has unique symbols for every unit, common sense is not to mix them up.


One of those? OK but when describing a computer, how could "g" mean anything else?

i7-8700/32g/10t

atom-c2758/16g/500g/2t

Everyone can tell what those are.
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eccerr0r
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for sharing my pet peeve with G vs g (and we haven't even gotten into the Gi vs G)... I was trying hard to not comment about people who say they have 1024g machines, what do they have, an overweight ~2.2 pound netbook?
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CaptainBlood
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hum,
can't see where to to click....
8G here, which seems the starting point for lto everywhere.
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1clue
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eccerr0r wrote:
Thanks for sharing my pet peeve with G vs g (and we haven't even gotten into the Gi vs G)... I was trying hard to not comment about people who say they have 1024g machines, what do they have, an overweight ~2.2 pound netbook?


Sorry it gets you so worked up. For me: (its|it's), (there|they're|their), (to|too|two)....

I know several teachers who get that wrong all the time on FB. I WILL bust their chops about it. Text messages are one thing with auto-complete and auto-correct. But I know they're using at least laptops.

Edit: When a person who is not familiar with English, or not a person who regularly communicates with written text does it it's not so bad. Customer support on forums where the guy is trying to rebuild an engine on an antique car, probably he's lucky to get the idea across and it doesn't bother me at all.

But when the person regularly communicates in English, typing 50 wpm and is very familiar with communicating in text, messes up their grammar my undies get bunched up fast. Oh yeah, I clearly don't need perfect grammar since I don't use it. Sometimes slang or street talk gets the point across more clearly than purely correct English. My peeve is the misuse of homonyms.


Last edited by 1clue on Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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John R. Graham
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are those that get their theres mixed up with their they'res and theirs; it's their cross to bear, I guess, but mostly they're unaware.

- John
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