zlacker

>>LorenD+(OP)
Not to disrespect this, but it used to be entirely normal to have a GUI environment on a machine with 2MB of RAM and a 40MB disk.

Or 128K of ram and 400 kb disk for that matter.

>>trollb+h6
A single 1920x1080 framebuffer (which is a low resolution monitor in 2025 IMO) is 2MB. Add any compositing into the mix for multi window displays and it literally doesn’t fit in memory.

>>maccar+P7
Do you really need the framebuffer in RAM? Wouldn't that be entirely in the GPU RAM?

>>echoan+S9
To put it in GPU RAM, you need GPU drivers.

For example, NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G.

That math actually goes wildly in the opposite direction for an optimization argument.

>>jerryt+3b
> NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G.

They also pack in a lot of game-specific optimizations for whatever reason. Could likely be a lot smaller without those.

>>Rohans+jc
Even the open source drivers without those hacks are massive. Each type of card has its own almost 100MB of firmware that runs on the card on Nvidia.

>>monoca+Ld
That's 100MB of RISC-V code, believe it or not, despite Nvidias ARM fixation.