undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmindcrime13y ago0 comments

Are all HN Eclipse users on Macs?

Not me. I run it on Linux. Fedora Linux on my personal laptop, and Ubuntu on my $DAYJOB machine.

I never notice memory because I never run out of memory. Where configs is everyone using that memory is such an issue?

It's not so much about running out of memory, as just the fact that Eclipse consumes a lot of memory, which means it doesn't play nice with other apps. I have 4GB of RAM in my $DAYJOB machine, running 64bit Ubuntu, and after I load Eclipse 4.2 with a few projects open, it's not uncommon to find the resident image size sitting at over 1GB. So, that wouldn't be a problem in isolation, but now add in an instance of JBoss running, PostgreSQL, a few browser windows with a bunch of tabs open, a PgAdminIII window, a couple of Gnome Terminal windows, etc. and pretty soon the hard-drive is just thrashing like crazy, essentially freezing the entire system, for minutes at a time. To be fair, everything is contributing to that, but Eclipse is one of the main culprits.

0 comments

4 comments · 3 top-level

xtracto13y ago· 1 in thread

> I have 4GB of RAM in my $DAYJOB machine, running 64bit Ubuntu, and after I load Eclipse 4.2 with a few projects open

I think the main problem is that having 4GB for a workstation is really low (specially for today's standards). Specially reading all the stuff that you put in.

I can imagine your day-to-day computer work should be unbearable. Are you based in the USA? I know that over there you can get 8GB for about $60, which for a company that is paying you $3000 monthly is peanuts.

mindcrimeOP13y ago

Oh, I already have the 2nd 4GB chip in my possession, I've just been to busy to install it. And maybe this is one place where my age is showing, but... 4 freaking GB of RAM, IMO, ought to be enough, not, as they say "for anybody", but enough to run an IDE, one app server instance, a couple of browser windows and a handful of smaller tools.

Then again, part of it is being on a laptop that doesn't have an SSD which makes swap painfully slow. But still, Eclipse takes too much freaking RAM for what it does, IMO.

All of that said, the next laptop I buy for myself is going to have an SSD and as much RAM as I can possibly afford.

Luyt13y ago

pretty soon the hard-drive is just thrashing like crazy, essentially freezing the entire system, for minutes at a time

As a side note, this is why I never configure swap space in a server. If a server starts swapping, it's a fail. It should have enough RAM to do the tasks it's supposed to do, without ever running out of RAM. When it runs out of RAM, either the software has to be reconfigured to work within the available RAM, or the RAM has to be increased; or some tasks should be allocated to other servers.

WickyNilliams13y ago

I'm not a eclipse user, but here's a comparison. On my workstation, visual studio 2010 regularly consumes over 1.5GB RAM. It's painful as hell, especially as I'm sometimes working on multiple solutions at once.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse