On 05/10/2020 03:25 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
As you can see, Th is using the absurd amount of 4.2 gigs of ram. Not a problem, I have lots of it - but sometimes I type and the letters take a second to appear. Or click on a menu or option and I have to wait for it to get highlighted.
Conclusion: Thunderbird is indeed slow and a memory hog.
Both thunderbird and firefox can use obnoxious amounts of memory. It is actually by design. I don't agree with the philosophy from a programming standpoint, but I understand it is a valid choice to make. Mozilla in general approaches memory management with the philosophy of: "if it's available -- use it to speed up execution of the code". I prefer the design choice of: "optimize your memory usage, using only what is needed for the current task and the release it" The problem with the mozilla approach is with computers now coming with huge amounts of memory 16G, 32G+, the overhead to scan through all of the memory allocated and in use -- takes time, and if swap is any way involved, that can be a LOT of time. I don't know what the answer is, as I don't know how much control, if any, mozilla gives you over RAM usage. Even the control over cache size has been whittle back (which is probably due to using ever increasing amounts of RAM). I know from my recent thread of the computer appearing "locked" when allocating more than 4G of RAM to a process, that much memory can take a lot of time to scan through.... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.