Do it. I know which OS will run fine on 8G of RAM and which one won't.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices
(www.notebookcheck.net)
I wouldn't be happy with 8 GB of RAM regardless of OS.
Same, I am often about 8 GB of RAM with my daily usage.
Nor would I, but if apps were actually optimized instead of the Electron nonsense we have now we'd be in a better place. I really hope this forces us to finally build better again instead of relying on infinite resources.
Someone's smelling the year of the desktop
I built a gaming PC last year with 32gb, and it’s time to upgrade my MacBook…
So, logically, I just moved my workflow to my desktop. I would say dual boot for the win… but honestly most of my games run great on Linux, so I think I’m just good there until and unless this blows over.
Minix and FreeBSD...
/runs; hides
I run fedora on 8GB and find it functional but definitely not comfortable. Anything past a dozen tabs and it starts getting choked up.
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So RAM costs them more now, and they need to pass those costs onto customers. However, it seems like they’re also trying to redefine what “mid-range” means to us all, as if we aren’t fully aware of what computers are capable of and what amount of memory is good vs not. Making the various ranges cost more is intuitive. Enshitifying the ranges to sell them at the same price is just antithetical to the whole concept of the ranges…
It’s like if batteries got stupid expensive and they tried to tell us 200km of range is what you get in a touring EV these days. But the distances between all the places haven’t changed…
Can see that happening, in this fake economy.
Isn’t the issue here the newest generation? I keep reading they’re way less tech savvy than the rest of us. Blended in with the propensity for young people to have an iPhone or Android and no PC, well, this junk will likely slide right by.
So our generation will be the first to have to teach both our boomer parents AND our millennial offspring what “RAM” is?!
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
GenX is mostly forgotten until tech support is needed, either direction, yes.
Millennials are fine, lol, and overlap with genx, this relates to the teens and early 20s age group.
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Hah, guess they're gonna have to run Linux. Windows 11 would choke on 8 GB RAM.
It's the year of the Linux desktop!
I agree, funny enough they require minimum 4 GB, but I had problems with it with 16 GB. 8 GB is nowhere near enough, especially if you use excel, teams, and that crap.
I have to use windows at work, have 32gb and regularly get browser tabs unloaded for low memory. I'm not running VMs or anything. Usually just Firefox, visual studio, and slack.
Personal computer is Linux with 16gb and that's more than enough.
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Maybe this will be a boon. The entire reason the ram requirements got so high as it is is because software optimization was put on the back burner. Maybe a ram shortage where people can't obtain the ram needed will force the big name software devs to start being more frugal with ram. (talking to you chrome... whom currently is using 2 gigs alone just trying to show a twitch stream...)
Or more realistically be used as an excuse for always online cloud based services a la office 365. "We would let you download the app, but most users don't have the computing power so instead we'll just make this a helpful subscription!"
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At least one studio, Larian, has confirmed this is the case for them.
When discussing the pressures the company faces when releasing a game in early access, such as audience expectations, Vincke told us, "Interestingly, another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs and f**k, man. It's like, literally, we've never had it like this."
He continued, "It kind of ruins all of your projections that you had about it because normally, you know the curves, and you can protect the hardware. It's gonna be an interesting one. It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn't necessarily want to do at that point in time. So it's challenging, but it's video games."
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Soldered in, or upgradeable at least? The former would be a huge reason to never buy the newest gen of laptops.
EDIT: Missed in article, yeah this would suck if they stick to soldered RAM for ultra-thins.
Another problem manufacturers face is with notebooks that ship with soldered DRAM. In particular, ultrathin designs would need to be revamped to modify their configurations.
Those soldered low RAM ones are going to be in the dump a lot sooner.
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lmao of course it's gonna be soldered in to push you to higher tiers
Probably single channel too because of course
It's neat that AI is already ruining the world in really tangible ways.
Does midrange being at 8GB mean that entry level will be 4GB? because I know corpos are gonna be corpos.
(I don't think windows even run at 4GB lmfao)
Edit: Also, this RAM shortage might force people to use Linux 😁
Windows 11 can run on 4GB. That's the minimum for the listed requirements, and the other day, I saw Best Buy selling a 4GB model, and I see some systems for sale online. I would imagine that it's not ideal.
I have seen a few of them. Yes they are bad. Basically idles at 85% memory usage on the desktop with nothing open.
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mid-range laptops to 8GB
My not-terribly-new phone has 12GB of memory, and I'm pretty sure that Android is a lot lighter on memory than the Windows 11 that I suspect a lot of these are going to be running.
Don’t worry Microsoft will shove as much agentic AI bullshit into Windows 11 as they can, further ruining performance.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications
Minimum system requirements for Copilot+ PCs
RAM: 16 GB DDR5/LPDDR5
I think that OpenAI has probably kind of bashed a hole in the bottom of Microsoft's boat on the local AI stuff, if 8GB is going to be midrange.
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Time to switch to Linux people lol. Windows is barely usable on 8GB these days.
Large computing will exist solely in the cloud where you will pay a subscription for it. Can't have these grubbing consumers buy anything we elites don't get a monthly cut of.
I wish this was sarcasm.
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This wouldn't be much of an issue if most of the laptops nowadays didn't come with soldered in ram and no options of expanding.
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And developers will make their shitty apps more resource-efficient, right? RIGHT!?
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The AI snake is finally eating its tail.
Why not just tell me to go fuck myself and skip the unsatisfying foreplay?
I thought I'd be fine, that I'd buy the other 16GB stick later. Now is later, I am screwed. I had to enable the use of ALT-SysRq-f to manually invoke OOM-killer because I often run out of RAM.
8GB just feels like way too little for a new laptop. Well, maybe the absolutely cheap ones, but "mid-range", no.
It's crazy. A bit over a year ago I got a refurbished ThinkPad for €180 with 1x16GB of RAM. Now that RAM costs around €120.
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That's going to make running anything on Windows rather uncomfortable.
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