This is a cache of https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/04/04/1652236/microsoft-edge-will-let-you-control-how-much-ram-it-uses-soon. It is a snapshot of the page at 2024-04-05T01:14:12.817+0000.
Microsoft Edge Will Let You Control How Much RAM It Uses Soon - Slashdot

Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft The Internet IT

Microsoft Edge Will Let You Control How Much RAM It Uses Soon (theverge.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the hallelujah dept.
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."

Microsoft Edge Will Let You Control How Much RAM It Uses Soon More | Reply

Microsoft Edge Will Let You Control How Much RAM It Uses Soon

Comments Filter:

  • Zero RAM? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @01:28PM (#64370118)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Most of the complaints are based around MS just force-feeding it to users in Windows. As a browser it works fine. It's chromium based now so it's not terrible from a technical prospective.

      • Re:Zero RAM? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @02:18PM (#64370284)

        It is also very difficult to properly uninstall. If you just uninstall the obvious way it just gets rid of some small stuff, but Edge remains and can still get used in some cases. This is the lesson Microsoft learned when sued in the past - make your optional packages an integral part of the OS so that removing them might cause other things to break. This will teach those damn free thinkers to stop tinkering with the ordained operating system. Even after uninstalling it the difficult way with the extra steps and registry tweaking to prevent reinstallation, it will occasionally show up again after a Windows update. Apparently Microsoft is actively learning how people avoid Edge and work around it, in the same way that malware learns to get around anti-malware.

        But seriously, it's a pain to remove it all. I have it gone at home. At work, IT, the high priests of all that is Microsoft and the advocates for MS shit-ware, install it. And then they override my preferences and make it the default PDF reader. So once a week or so I am resetting the defaults back to Firefox...

        So essentially, I can't escape Edge. It's always lurking ready to pounce. The computer version of Play Misty For Me.

    • Not entirely true, it needs just enough ram to download another browser.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dadoo ( 899435 )

      I don't have a horse in this race because I don't use Windows.

      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.

  • How about 1 MB minimum?

  • You close some tabs
    Or just buy more RAM.

    Solutions for this issue exist.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Exactly, fuck giving users options! BUY MORE RAM!

      This message sponsored by Micron

    • 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

    • 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?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      I have two tabs open. That has 22 processes spawned, and is using 1.6GB of RAM. But you're right, that's clearly a user problem.

  • Edge auto start (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bite The Pillow ( 3087109 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @01:41PM (#64370152)

    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.

    • 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...

    • Microsoft does this a lot. You might not notice this on new computers, but older ones you definitely can speed up the slow bootup by disabling the "smart" applications that do this. Because they all assume that you, the naive user, will use their application immediately and often.

    • It's called "Startup Boost [elevenforum.com]" and I disable it on almost any PC I touch.

    • Thanks for that tip, I just went around to my machines and killed it.

  • 640k ought to be enough for any app.
  • ...and you would trust them with RAM.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malggi ( 791997 )

      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.

  • Why does Microsoft care so much? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bubblyceiling ( 7940768 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @01:47PM (#64370176)
    I don't understand, but why is Microsoft so hell bent on making Edge popular? What is the motive here? Are they collecting data and making money off its sale?

    • Ego? As in they must be number in in everything, meaning they end up being half-assed at everything because they try to do too much.
        Probably it's advertising, as in most users don't use adblock and so they get a kickback from advertisers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      Are they collecting data and making money off its sale?

      Do you even have to ask anymore? Of course they are.

    • 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.

    • Control the browser, control the experience. Remember, type something into Edge that isn't a URL and you end up at bing.com

  • If you are using Edge, this will definitely help you:
    https://downloadmoreram.com/ [downloadmoreram.com]

  • Why would I want to sacrifice performance by restricting how much memory my browser is using? If I have RAM to spare, go ahead and use it. If another application needs the memory, it's the kernel's job to evict caches and page out intelligently. Users shouldn't have to care about micromanaging memory these days.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      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

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfm3 ( 830843 )
      But I'm not limiting the amount of memory my browser is using, I'm limiting the amount of memory Edge is using...
  • Firefox is guilty of hoarding ram too. Even when i go into about:memory and click the purge button. Only rebooting the browser actually frees ram. If Edge actually frees ram properly it could be actually be worth using.

  • What the hell for? It's a damn browser!

    • 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,

  • Edge is available for a bunch of platforms. iOS, Andriod, MacOS, Linux...

  • RISC OS has RAM sliders since 1987 (Score:3)

    by Koen Lefever ( 2543028 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @04:37PM (#64370676)
    In RISC OS (and its predecessor Arthur), there are sliders to decide how much RAM each program can use [riscos.com] since 1987.

    • I liked IBM System 36, it allowed you to control the percentage of CPU allocated to any running program.

  • ... 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.

  • I know a way to make Edge use 0 MB/GB of RAM. Same trick works on Chrome and every other rebranded Chrome malware.

Slashdot Top Deals

** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER **

Close