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I have a laptop dell inspiron 3501(linux ubuntu 22.04 as OS) with ram 8gb, ssd 256gb, processor i5-1135G7. I use this laptop for programming mostly. But sometimes my laptops doesn't respond at all because of the applications load.

For example if I use postman, vscode, multiple chrome tabs, microsoft teams, terminals and sublime text at once then my laptop doesn't responds properly and sometimes needs to restart the laptop with power off button physically.

So how can I increase my laptop performance so that I can do those things in parallel smoothly without any disturbance ?

I'm sorry if these type of questions are not allowed in this site, please suggest me the right community.

Result of free -m

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            7677        5821         765         605        1090         869
Swap:           2047        1638         409
D_P
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  • How much swap do you have? Include result of free -m in your question using the [edit] button. – gronostaj Sep 08 '22 at 06:13
  • 8GB isn't enough RAM. 256GB is also not enough drive space. How much free space is there on it? Combination of low RAM & full drive, combined with what gronostaj is asking above could easily drag the machine to a halt. – Tetsujin Sep 08 '22 at 06:32
  • @gronostaj just updated my question. please check it – D_P Sep 08 '22 at 09:52
  • @Tetsujin question edited. please check it – D_P Sep 08 '22 at 09:53
  • Swap looks too small. Hand-wavy number would be 'same as RAM', but idk how nix allocates swap. [I'm use to Mac which makes its own mind up & I have 64GB RAM, so even after 10 days' uptime mine still shows 0 bytes swap used.] We still need to know how full the drive is, as that could heavily impact your speed. – Tetsujin Sep 08 '22 at 09:57
  • @Tetsujin do you think upgrading ram to 16gb from 8gb , and adding extra 128gb ssd can handle such type of tasks(mentioned on the question) ? – D_P Sep 08 '22 at 10:00
  • It's unlikely to hurt ;) 8/256 is pretty tiny these days. Smallest compy in the building here is 16/2TB & I can still choke that pretty easily [biggest are 64/14TB] – Tetsujin Sep 08 '22 at 10:18

1 Answers1

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Both your RAM and swap are almost full. Your computer locks up because it's running out of memory.

8 GB is barely enough for browsing the Internet nowadays. I'd suggest upgrading to at least 16 GB.

Your laptop has 2 memory slots so there's currently either a single 8 GB module in there with the other slot unoccupied, or two 4GB modules and you'll have to replace one of them.

  • 1×8GB: In this situation you can add another 8 GB or 16 GB module, for a total of 16 GB or 24 GB.
  • 2×4GB: Here you have two options: upgrade single 4 GB module to 16 GB (for a total of 20 GB) or upgrade both to 8 GB each (16 GB total). With both modules upgraded you'll get slight memory performance boost from full dual channel, but you'll have 4 GB less of usable RAM.

When shopping for memory modules, make sure to match not only memory type and voltage, but also operating frequencies. Adding a slower memory module will slow down the current one too. Buying faster is generally ok - it just won't operate at its full potential.

Consider also increasing swap size to 4 GB or even a bit more. This will give the OS some extra room for dumping data from RAM to disk in low memory situations.

Regarding disk space, it really depends on your usage and habits. I've been doing professional software development on a 256 GB drive for the last 3 years. If you have 30+ GB of free disk space at all time, then the performance is unlikely to suffer.

Changing filesystems to btrfs with zstd compression will likely let you save a couple GBs while increasing performance, but it's quite a lot of work and I wouldn't recommend doing this with valuable data unless you really know what you're doing.

gronostaj
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