It depends on what you are doing. I've got single board computers running happily with 512MB of RAM. I certainly wouldn't want to try and run a GUI on them though.
People have been running GUIs on much less for decades--though if you're trying to use something out-of-the-box, anything modern will certainly not do well. But there's tons of RPi stuff that runs on meager specs.
I'd have expected people would use these things for similar projects as SBCs.
I used to run a GUI on a Raspberry Pi B+ and it was doable, but that was a decade ago and many programs have gotten a lot more bloated since then. Of course if you are just running your own software, you can optimize it to run with very little RAM.
What, you mean 640KB isn't really enough for everyone?
. . . I kid, I kid. Still, the CarThing strikes me as more of an embedded-type system. 512MB is generous for devices of that class, and more than sufficient for a carefully-tailored Linux kernel + busybox + another 100MB+ of running software. Potato, yes, but potatoes are a useful food source—just not as impressive as filet mignon.
Yes, see my other comment in this post, I've mentioned what you've said, however, you should know, ps3 gpu could use both vram and ram but CPU on the other hand didn't, so it's kinda shared actually
I wouldn't call it running well though. Just barely playable on PS3. It was possible to get into a car, drive down a long, straight road and then crash into an invisible building because some cars were faster than the console could load assets.
Because for example OPNsense recommeds at least 8GB of RAM, though the bare minimum is 2GB.
And even purpose-built enterprise routers are certainly in similar ballpark. BGP will eat that.
I don't think I've seen one of those dumb ones with nearly that much RAM. Usually they're like 16MB/32MB. Guess I'll have to check.
Yeah idk man I had to upgrade mine to the max supported ram (I think 8gb or something) because I run a bunch of services like adguard home and jellyfin on it
Yeah I remember my uni professor exclaimed "that's a 128mb usb stick? Holy fuck!" Or the 32mb MMC card for my ngage that could hold a whopping whole 10 songs
If you're mostly running Mastodon, and other open source platforms and software particularly with no ads, typically the less demand on your hardware. I use to have a 2 gb ram laptop and it surprisingly was able to do a lot once I got Linux installed. I was able to get ps1 emulators running at full frame rate with 2 gb ram. on the default windows 10 install, good luck getting anything like that out of 2 gb of ram.
Usually what affects the hardware performance is what's running on it. If you stick to 2d sprites, avoid ads and 3D renders, block autoplay gifs and video the better your browsing experience gets. Also block JavaScript.
So it couldn't just be a web based player for something like PlexAmp? Thats literally all I would want it for. Seems like it could do the job it was made for but for another app would be ideal.
Yeah, that’s definitely not enough RAM to run any kind of lightweight UI. Especially not an automotive music remote control client 🤔
The 3rd gen Nest Thermostat also has 512MB of RAM, and it isn’t too much of a potato to be a thermostat, complete with animated UI. Author of this article has a severe lack of imagination