Huge use of RAM Topic is solved

[Aztec]

Basilisk 2021-1-5 uses A LOT of RAM even after the tabs were closed (for some reason all browsers based on firefox including firefox itself do this)

[New Tobin Paradigm]

How long has your session been and what types of sites have you been to? What have you been doing? How long has it been since you closed the last tab?

[Moonchild]

1 GB is not strange for a modern browser visiting current heavy websites.
Also, understand that immediately after closing tabs, memory will not instantly reduce because of the various caching mechanisms in play and the fact that JS memory needs to be garbage-collected.

[jobbautista9]

Also, understand that immediately after closing tabs, memory will not instantly reduce because of the various caching mechanisms in play and the fact that JS memory needs to be garbage-collected.

Ah, so that's why memory doesn't immediately reduce after I close a tab.

Does that also explain why when I close a tab, memory temporarily spikes up then goes down after a few seconds? This usually happens when I close a Facebook or YouTube tab after browsing there for a long time.

[Moonchild]

Does that also explain why when I close a tab, memory temporarily spikes up then goes down after a few seconds?

When visiting those sites? yes, that's expected. It will most likely trigger a run which basically moves memory to a fresh block to get rid of fragmentation, that temporarily increases memory use.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Now there is a known but unsolved issue of some sites, mostly google/youtube/github/twitter that can cause a pile up of ghost windows leading to eventual memory usage that won't ever be released or may take even longer before it gets forced out of memory but after a few days you can just close and reopen the application.

I don't normally do anything about it unless it starts impacting performance. Also, hasn't been that severe imo since early 2019.

[Aztec]

Also, understand that immediately after closing tabs, memory will not instantly reduce because of the various caching mechanisms in play and the fact that JS memory needs to be garbage-collected.

I see, thanks for the explanation Moonchild, although surely is strange to see the RAM so high, some time ago something like this would be unthinkable.

[Moonchild]

some time ago something like this would be unthinkable.

Some time ago we also didn't have games taking 50GB of disk space or requiring 8 cores to run smooth.

[moonbat]

Some time ago we also didn't have games taking 50GB of disk space or requiring 8 cores to run smooth.

Off-topic:
Difference being those games also have massive improvements in graphics and physics to go with the increased resource usage, as compared to websites that have bloated beyond belief while stripping away and dumbing down features for 'simple' mobile interfaces.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

Difference being those games also have massive improvements in graphics and physics to go with the increased resource usage, as compared to websites that have bloated beyond belief while stripping away and dumbing down features for 'simple' mobile interfaces.

Excuse me, but web browsers are very much akin to 3D games.
Whether sites are being wasteful (a la making a pixel-graphics game in the Unreal engine or what not -- plenty of such things exist so don't just polarize this as games good vs. web bad) or not is besides the point.

[moonbat]

Off-topic:

Excuse me, but web browsers are very much akin to 3D games.

Never disputed that, was pointing out that the games at least give you visual bang for the buck as a tradeoff, modern bloated websites are often worse and less featured than their older versions from a decade ago. I'd even say the modern browser is forced to be like this thanks to feature creep in HTML/Javascript 'living' standards in a bid to use them to replace every other possible application as opposed to rendering documents with a little interactivity.