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

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

#571

Post by vendiddy » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #459

ndriscoll wrote: post #37

My gaming PC that I built in January 2006 that IIRC I used to simultaneously run Battlefield 2, Trillian, Xfire, Thunderbird, and Winamp with a 1680x1050 monitor had 1 GB of total system RAM.

That's because programmers in 2006 didn't understand programming. They didn't understand how to make their software better . Real programming means writing your own javascript glue, pulling in hundreds of supply-chain-compromised js libraries that you never inspect or profile, and running the whole thing in a browser engine, while making sure to store all state in the cloud. The modern breed of programmers who don't…

Dang... I use zig at work to write single binary apps and I know what a floppy is. I feel personally attacked.

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

#572

Post by 7bit » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #376

asdfman123 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch of other requirements you need to meet and no one cares about RAM consumption. So you do it the most time efficient way, not the most memory efficient. Before you scorn, doing it the opposite way, taking more to use less memory, makes you less promotable, not more.

And this is why Windows will have it's lunch eaten by Linux.

I wonder when this praised day will come. When did we hear this first? Is 20 years ago too soon?

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

#573

Post by 7bit » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

ed_mercer wrote: post #292

They're pointing to macOS and saying it uses 5 times less RAM there, but is 230MB for a weather app really something to be proud off?

The people who develop this stuff don't know what it's like to have 64 MB of memory. They grew up with 4+ or 2+ if they've been poor. Their dev machines probably have 64 GB. 500 to them is a rounding error. That's why they are proud.

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

#574

Post by winstonwinston » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #181

Putting aside the fact that it is horribly bloated. Accurately measuring RAM usage is tricky, there are several measurements, and no "right" one. It is clear from the article that what eats up so much RAM is not the weather app itself but the framework it runs on. There is a "Renderer", a "GPU Process",... eating most of it. The thing that the task manager doesn't tell you is whether or not these are shared component…

> It may be that the 662 MB used by the "Renderer" is shared between many Windows components, so killing that Weather app may not reclaim as much space as you may hope, instead, it would require killing every user of the component, some may be core system apps.

Bet one’s ass that “Renderer” sub-process is embed browser engine allocating working memory for rendering of web app page layout.

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

#575

Post by user00005 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

This is the type of discussion I come to HN for.

Some kind of weather app challenge would be fun. Vote for the best balance of features vs efficiency.

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

#576

Post by tanseydavid » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

deburo wrote: post #549

asdfman123 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch of other requirements you need to meet and no one cares about RAM consumption. So you do it the most time efficient way, not the most memory efficient. Before you scorn, doing it the opposite way, taking more to use less memory, makes you less promotable, not more.

Perhaps no one cared about RAM consumption, but RAM is expensive again. In this specific case, is your Weather app important enough to waste 1GB on your users' PCs? Most PCs only have 16 GB.

>> is your Weather app important enough to waste 1GB on your users' PCs?

I agree. I don't want or need a weather app on my machine.

Did not ask for it and I do not use it. Why should it be using any of my RAM?

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

#577

Post by NooneAtAll3 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #411

welwala wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another easy workaround: 1. Install Linux with KDE 2. Turn on weather report widget 3. Enjoy :) PS: You've also solved the mandatory account requirement, adds all over the OS, "Copilot" everywhere, Edge constantly coming back and much more <3

For the Windows look and feel, I recommend Mint + Cinnamon. It took me about 15min to not miss anything on Windows and was shocked how I had forgotten how clean a system can be. Mandatory Windows accounts can still be circumvented with a console command for Win 11 installations, but the overall enshitification package just got worse and worse. Cinnamon is X11, but it works very well.

> Cinnamon is X11, *so* it works very well.

FIFY

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

#578

Post by welwala » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #546

prplxd_nihilist wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mandatory Windows accounts can still be circumvented with a console command for Win 11 installations Heard that's patched too

Did it the day before yesterday with a fresh win11 image from Microsoft (no rufus magic or anything). You can press shift + f10 and run a command I don't remember. It restarts the install process and lets you create a local account while it still patches the system before the first start (no fiddling with internet connections required). At least that still works. At least for an install in vbox under Mint :)

oobe\bypassnro it is.

But there's been some talk about them removing it though there was a more cryptic one as a replacement. Still seems to work on recent versions though.

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

#579

Post by ProllyInfamous » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

jcarrano wrote: post #454

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most-difficult part of installing any Linux distro is getting the motivation to create the boot media . Luckily for Ubuntu (I'm running v26) you can use an old HD or USB and then [your flavor of LLM] to then walk you through the steps on how to make the media bootable (at least: that's what I did). I am a bluecollar electrician (yes, it took me a few tries; yes, I accidentally fucked up my first few OS's doing st…

What if they had usb drives with Linux installers in blister packs at electronics stores?

I would have paid $19.99USD for this. For serious.

Seems like an obvious fundraising avenue (for Ubuntu Foundation).

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

#580

Post by ndsipa_pomu » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #537

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Rufus ( https://rufus.ie/en/ ) is excellent for writing USB disks. I believe it's Windows/DOS only, but even as a Linux user for several decades, I boot into Windows just to run it if I need to burn an installer.

On Linux if you're comfortable with the command line use "sudo dd"

I've tried that previously (or sudo dcfldd to give better feedback), but it doesn't always seem to work for ISOs. Ironically, I've had issues writing Linux ISOs onto a USB stick under Linux, so nowadays I just use Rufus which has never failed me.

I've installed a few SBCs and they don't tend to have an issue booting, so I do use dd/dcfldd for those. I wonder if it's because they use SD cards that they don't have an issue.