[sf-lug] some notes on the Virtual Meeting of Sunday 3 January 2021

[Rick Moen]

Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36 at SDF.ORG):

> Continuing on from Victor's availability of only 4 GB of installed
> RAM on his PC.

I know people perceive this as a real problem, and I really shouldn't
laugh, but I do boggle and chuckle every time I see people using phrases
like 'only 4GB of installed RAM' (in the context of desktop Linux) with
no discernible sense of irony.

I'll just gently point out, once again, that it's not necessary to run
bloatware, and that part of the task of getting to know Linux is to
customise your installation and decide actively what you wish to run and
why you wish to run it.  Just accepting all the distro-installer
defaults and then declaring the task 'done' when it terminates and
reboots is short-changing yourself, and never learning what the heck
you're doing.

Anyhow, when folks are done doing protracted tire-kicking and want to 
actually learn, and get much greater satisfaction with less waste of
machine resources, they can.  I'm pretty sure a properly lean,
non-bloated Linux desktop system will still be confortable with 2 GB
total RAM, even with 2021-grade apps that have grown like Topsy since
a decade ago (Web browsers being one of the major culprits).  

Naturally, even a carefully constructed system can be brought to its
knees by, say, keeping 30 browser tabs open with no ad-blocker or
Javascript controls.

The adtech / user-tracking companies certainly don't care at all about
your Web browser bloat and poor performance, and failing to take
countermeasures -- which are up to the user to implement, and not
delivered on a platter -- appears to be one of the reasons we keep
hearing claims that increasingly monstrous amounts of RAM aren't enough.

(Rhetorical question;  How many people here occasionally take a look at
the process list, and determine what processes are sucking RAM?  Maybe
y'all should make a point of doing that.)

> Some of the various factors mentioned that will no doubt come into
> play at some point are...
> - current and future mutations of the COVID19 virus such as the
> current mutation spreading through the UK and the US states of
> Colorado and California

FYI, there's now an additional new strain emerging from South Africa,
that's said to be at least as infectious than the UK-sourced one, _and_
involve "pretty substantial changes in the structure of the [virus’
spike] protein" (that is targeted by the Pfizer, Moderna, and
Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines).
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/south-african-coronavirus-variant-more-of-a-problem-than-uk-one.html
Thrills!

> - current and future costs of reaching out to communities and then
> administering to these communities the proscribed doses of vaccine
> (not even considering for the moment the related issue of those
> vocal anti-vaxxers!)

At the risk of being pedantic:  There's a minor risk of confusion in the
above, as I'm pretty sure you meant prescribed (specified) rather than
proscribed (prohibited).