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Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

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Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#141

Post by torh »

SBArbeit wrote: post #116
rahulmax wrote: post #92

"Windows users are fundamentally willing to put up with more bullshit than MacOS or Linux users." I read this circa 2010 and it stuck with me ever since. Also, have felt this way over the years, when I see Windows users work.

Super interesting; it's been exactly the opposite in my experience. MacOS/iOS users put up with whatever Apple is telling them they should love - Liquid Glass, right? App Store restrictions, right? Lousy AI, right? - whether it's true or not. Linux users are willing to put up with any amount of work - i.e. bullshit - to make their installations work just to get a UX that's almost as good as Windows from 20 years ago.…

> to make their installations work just to get a UX that's almost as good as Windows from 20 years ago

To be fair, that was the peak of Windows UI. Also, KDE Plasma is way ahead of Windows (any of them).

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#142

Post by Const-me »

perching_aix wrote: post #112
Const-me wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 MB is not too bad for a GUI app. If the app is full screen, display is FullHD and has 8 bit depth, that's almost 8 MB memory for the back buffer alone. Enable HDR and pixels become 8 bytes RGBA16_Float instead of 4 bytes BGRA8_Unorm, twice as much memory.

This is only relevant if we assume CPU rendering. The article described system RAM use, not video RAM use. Task Manager doesn't combine the two. They clearly spent it on maintaining their independent Chromium instance instead.

True, but many modern computers are using unified memory. On such systems all memory is almost equal, despite often reported differently.

For example, on my 5 years old laptop with integrated AMD GPU, windows 10 calculator in default state uses 33 MB system RAM, 9.6 MB dedicated VRAM. Maximized to FullHD screen, same app uses 36 MB system RAM, 13 MB dedicated VRAM. Maybe the OS counts VRAM as active private working set, maybe the app uses more than 1 buffer.

Regardless of the reason, it’s IMO unrealistic to expect a modern GUI app to consume less memory than required for the frame buffer for its window.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#143

Post by derac »

nashashmi wrote: post #29
eviks wrote: post #25

> By comparison, Apple's native Weather app on macOS reportedly uses less than 250 MB of RAM That's also bloated, couldn't they find a better comparison to illustrate the egregious waste?

It’s an equivalent app to make a comparison with, one from an OS company. But yeah, I still remember when a weather app would take 10 MB and I was complaining (1999)

I prompted my own windows taskbar weather app in rust with radar and forecasts and it's 233 kB.

https://github.com/derac/WeatherTray

I use Linux now, so you're on your own if there are issues. It might require some windows library to be installed but I don't recall. I ran it for a long while on win11.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#144

Post by preg_match »

magackame wrote: post #138
blackhaz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 MB is ridiculously overbloated. 1 MB or something in that vicinity should be more like it.

I think you guys on HN can be a bit out of touch maybe? On my linux machine (measured with tux-manager): nautilus 177 MB kitty 150 MB alacritty 107 MB mpv --idle --force-window 160 MB winit empty window + OpenGL context 100 MB tux-manager 69 MB hexchat 55 MB gnome-terminal 47 MB st 12 MB xterm 12 MB All these apps are what you would consider native, good apps. Written with Qt, GTK, some in low level langs like C\C++,…

Yes these are all very, very complex applications though.

But I agree: using more memory is good, actually, because it means more stuff is being cached. Nautilus is probably pre-indexing directory structure so it doesn't have to read disk every single time you open your home folder. That's good. Oh, and thumbnails. Thumbnails are incredibly expensive memory wise, but very useful!

Also modern apps have A LOT built-in. Tons of font management stuff, accessibility, they work on many different environments. I mean, look at everything that goes into a modern terminal emulator.

But... a weather app is much simpler, IMO, than Nautilus or Kitty.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#145

Post by khazhoux »

blackhaz wrote: post #73
nashashmi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an equivalent app to make a comparison with, one from an OS company. But yeah, I still remember when a weather app would take 10 MB and I was complaining (1999)

10 MB is ridiculously overbloated. 1 MB or something in that vicinity should be more like it.

Even 1MB is too much. I expect a modern weather app to be <20K.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#146

Post by khazhoux »

anabab wrote: post #123
Const-me wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 MB is not too bad for a GUI app. If the app is full screen, display is FullHD and has 8 bit depth, that's almost 8 MB memory for the back buffer alone. Enable HDR and pixels become 8 bytes RGBA16_Float instead of 4 bytes BGRA8_Unorm, twice as much memory.

2 bit 160x144px ought to be enough for anything

Look at Richie Rich over here with his 2 bits!

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#147

Post by preg_match »

useasvg wrote: post #27
charleslmunger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A weather widget using 8 bit color plus alpha on a 4k display show three full size images in 100mb. But I suspect that's not the ux we're talking about here, and a widget style system has no excuse.

Use an svg. Or render everything using css, 100mb is someone not trying. 1gb is absurd abuse that only domestic violence victims put up with.

SVG is an on-disk format. It has to be rasterized, otherwise how do you have pixels? Each pixel takes up memory.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#148

Post by binaryturtle »

blackhaz wrote: post #73
nashashmi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an equivalent app to make a comparison with, one from an OS company. But yeah, I still remember when a weather app would take 10 MB and I was complaining (1999)

10 MB is ridiculously overbloated. 1 MB or something in that vicinity should be more like it.

`ansiweather` needs like ~6.28 MiB (measured with `/usr/bin/time -l` on OS X), but it's a bash script that invokes cURL, so there's certainly various overheads there too.

One probably could get this down way below ~1 MiB with a properly tuned straight executable written in C (best not to use any of the "modern" stuff like Rust and Go, their default binary sizes for outputting "Hello, world!\n" are already extreme :-) )

By default anything needs at least 532480 bytes RSS on OSX (I tested it with the most minimal C hello world), so that's a threshold one probably can't beat on OS X at least. We probably could kill that value on Amiga OS with the exact same functionality. :-)

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#150

Post by shooly »

SBArbeit wrote: post #137
shooly wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if the only things you can name are Liquid Glass, App Store and not-so-intelligent AI then it seems like Apple users are actually doing quite well? It's impossible for every idea to be a hit. Liquid Glass was a miss and they backtracked on some changes and fixed some issues that people were vocal about.

I can name lots of things I can't stand about MacOS and iOS and Apple hardware, but that wasn't the point of the comment. Some of the things I can't stand about Apple are things that people used to Apple's stuff don't mind. Cool for you. But I'm still not moving to The Villages, ever.

> things that people used to Apple's stuff don't mind

... but that's what you said about Windows:

> Windows found itself in a downturn the last few years

> I live in Windows Town, it's not perfect, no city is

> [...] avoid the "neighborhoods" that suck

Really the original comment just reads like you wanted to rant about Apple users and MacOS and that's it. You didn't really give any strong arguments for why Windows is better than MacOS - and "it's not perfect" is not an argument when in the same post you say the exact same about your preferred OS.

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