Canonical is Making the Cost of PCs Very High, Due to Unnecessary Ubuntu Bloat
Canonical now says that a stable Ubuntu release requires 4GB of RAM. That's odd. In 2007 I ran Ubuntu and Kubuntu on computers with just 512 megabytes (yes, megabytes) of RAM and it all worked fine. Back then Ubuntu was a lot like Debian and the whole install didn't take a lot of disk space, maybe 3,000 megabytes in total.
But as someone pointed out, the issue here isn't just abandonment of "old" PCs. Ubuntu and its derivatives will be "missing the boat". All those Vista 10 'refugees' don't wish to buy a new PC for GNU/Linux. They should not have to, either.
"The RAM bloat is highly relevant due to the high cost of DDR5," a reader told me. "Look up the new and old prices for 16 GB, I dare you ;)"
Today I saw an article about OEMs considering to sell PCs without RAM and making RAM a sort of addon (or "bring your own RAM", "add your own RAM").
They say the reason for the price surge is LLM hype/frenzy.
As the reader put it: "Keep in mind that LLMs and related speculation are more or less the sole cause of the price increase and accompanying shortages."
Well, Ubuntu has hundreds of derivatives. It needs to find a way to trim things down, not swallow CoCs, Rust, Wayland and all sorts of other hype waves. █