[conspire] How much memory each process is taking up

[Rick Moen]

Another afterthought:

> Finally, we get to serious memory usage:
> 
> "icedove" (Mozilla Thunderbird):  about 130 MB of RSS across three
> processes.
> 
> "iceweasel" (Mozilla Firefox):  320 MB of RSS.

And, gods above, what a hog that is.  In part, the 1/3 gigabyte of
resident set size was attributable to having eight tabs open.  Close
seven of them, and, sadly, RSS does _not_ go down.  Close it and open a
new browser instance with no page loaded, and I get (quoting "top"):

RSS = 45 MB
SHR = 17 MB
VSZ = 136 MB.

This is, however, not a barebones Firefox v. 3.0.6.  It has these
extensions:

Adblock 0.5.3.043
BugMeNot 2.1
Firebug 1.3.2
NoScript 1.6.9.3
User Agent Switcher 0.6.11

All Firefox extensions are interpreted code written in XUL, and seem to
be not exactly RAM-saving.

Someone trying to save RAM would absolutely not run those extensions.
If barebones Firefox still doesn't cut it -- as might be the case for
128-256MB decade-old boxes -- then you would have to look at mostly-OK
smaller alternatives:  BrowseX, Dillo, Minimo.  I'd look at them in that
order.


I could also save a _big_ load of RAM by substituting mutt for "icedove"
(Mozilla Thunderbird), and may eventually do so.