General laptop hardware question
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General laptop hardware question
Hi,
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad i5 with 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD running Mint 18.2
My question is, if you could only afford to upgrade one component, would it be RAM or HDD>SSD?
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad i5 with 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD running Mint 18.2
My question is, if you could only afford to upgrade one component, would it be RAM or HDD>SSD?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: General laptop hardware question
HDD -> SSD.
My Thinkpad has similar specs and runs 17.3 Cinnamon just fine. It has a SSD.
My Thinkpad has similar specs and runs 17.3 Cinnamon just fine. It has a SSD.
If your issue is solved, kindly indicate that by editing the first post in the topic, and adding [SOLVED] to the title. Thanks!
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Re: General laptop hardware question
Thanks for that - the thing is, my system is usually up at around 90% RAM usage, with 11 Chromium tabs open, Thunderbird and LO running. Is this normal?
Update - I'm on Cinnamon 18.1
Update - I'm on Cinnamon 18.1
Re: General laptop hardware question
I'm using 1.8Gb with Cinnamon, running one Firefox tab and Thunderbird.
If you're using 90% memory, then more memory is an obvious choice although otherwise I would generally say an SSD is a great upgrade.
Personally, I use a small SSD for my system drive (64Gb should be more than enough) and a separate spinny disc (which I put in place of the DVD drive on my laptop) to store data (music, pictures, e-books etc).
If you're using 90% memory, then more memory is an obvious choice although otherwise I would generally say an SSD is a great upgrade.
Personally, I use a small SSD for my system drive (64Gb should be more than enough) and a separate spinny disc (which I put in place of the DVD drive on my laptop) to store data (music, pictures, e-books etc).
Re: General laptop hardware question
why do you need so many Tabs open ? that in itself, is a memory hog.gordonbp wrote: my system is usually up at around 90% RAM usage, with 11 Chromium tabs open,
- just saying. ..
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
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- z31fanatic
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Re: General laptop hardware question
Get both and be happy.
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Re: General laptop hardware question
But that's the point of my question - I can't afford to do both!
Re: General laptop hardware question
Only 11... I have 20 open now!Pierre wrote:why do you need so many Tabs open ? that in itself, is a memory hog.gordonbp wrote: my system is usually up at around 90% RAM usage, with 11 Chromium tabs open,
- just saying. ..
Mint 21 Vanessa | Cinnamon | x64
Re: General laptop hardware question
Which DE?
Personally, I'd go the RAM route. But I use KDE, which is resource-heavy, and I also open up dozens of tabs at a time.
Personally, I'd go the RAM route. But I use KDE, which is resource-heavy, and I also open up dozens of tabs at a time.
Try politeness; people will like you for it.
Re: General laptop hardware question
A machine with 4G RAM and an SSD will ruin Cinnamon brilliantly as long as it has a properly supported video card in Linux. I've seen many reports on forums where users with a lot of power were still getting poor Cinnamon (or Unity eg) performance because they didn't have 3D hardware accelerated video.Moem wrote:HDD -> SSD.
My Thinkpad has similar specs and runs 17.3 Cinnamon just fine. It has a SSD.
So the video card may be the bottleneck, but otherwise I'd agree that changing the spinner to an SSD would be best. But if you were running Cinnamon in 2G RAM I may suggest more RAM instead.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
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Re: General laptop hardware question
How do I find out if I have 3d accelerated video or not?
Re: General laptop hardware question
SSD
I've got a T430 with 8G RAM and a 240G SSD. RAM usage currently sat at 17%, not that I'm doing a lot, chromium. Running 18.1.
I've got a T430 with 8G RAM and a 240G SSD. RAM usage currently sat at 17%, not that I'm doing a lot, chromium. Running 18.1.
Thinkcentre M720Q - LM21.3 cinnamon, 4 x T430 - LM21.3 cinnamon, Homebrew desktop i5-8400+GTX1080 Cinnamon 19.0
Re: General laptop hardware question
No. Currently my system uses 4.4 GB RAM with a virtual machine, Firefox (39 tabs in 2 windows open), Thunderbird, 2 document viewers and 1 Nemo window open (and a number of tools in my systray). The virtual machine alone uses 1.8 GB, so all the rest uses 2.6 GB, about 1 GB less than in your case. You should investigate, which of the open applications occupy this amount of RAM.gordonbp wrote:the thing is, my system is usually up at around 90% RAM usage, with 11 Chromium tabs open, Thunderbird and LO running. Is this normal?
I use Mint 17.3, but this should not make such a big difference (if at all).
Another interesting question in this context: Does your system uses swap? How much?
- z31fanatic
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Re: General laptop hardware question
Of course you can, an extra 4GB RAM is $30 at the mostgordonbp wrote:But that's the point of my question - I can't afford to do both!
Re: General laptop hardware question
That's still a lot of money to some people.z31fanatic wrote:Of course you can, an extra 4GB RAM is $30 at the mostgordonbp wrote:But that's the point of my question - I can't afford to do both!
Try politeness; people will like you for it.
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Re: General laptop hardware question
Thanks for all the responses - I've sort of done some lateral thinking and changed from Cinnamon to xfce, which seems to be far less of a memory hog. With the same apps and web tabs open (Firefox not Chromium) I'm only using 50% of RAM....
Re: General laptop hardware question
Some would argue that unused RAM is wasted RAM, but I personally prefer some extra overhead for the occasional heavy load. I think xfce is a fine DE and have it on my laptop alongside KDE and Win 10 (of course, almost any DE is preferable to Win 10, but it does have its occasional use).
Try politeness; people will like you for it.