cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1001830

Today, we’re happy to announce the launch of the 2GB Raspberry Pi 5, built on a cost-optimised D0 stepping of the BCM2712 application processor, and priced at just $50.

The new D0 stepping strips away all that unneeded functionality, leaving only the bits we need. From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, it is functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; the same multimedia capabilities; and the same PCI Express bus that has proven to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform. However, it is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost. And this, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, has allowed us to take $10 out of the cost of the finished product.

So, while our most demanding users — who want to drive dual 4Kp60 displays, or open a hundred browser tabs, or compile complex software from source — will probably stick with the existing higher memory-capacity variants of Raspberry Pi 5, many of you will find that this new, lower-cost variant works perfectly well for your use cases.

  • Eugenia@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    3 years ago XFCe needed on Debian about 450 MB of RAM (on a clean boot). It now needs 850. And that’s not so much XFce’s fault, it’s all the other stuff underneath that have been growing too much too.

    I mean, heck, Cosmic should not need more than 500 MB of RAM overall, having such a clean codebase. And yet it’s the heaviest of them all, at 2.5 GB (even Gnome/KDE boots at 1.3 GB on Debian). And it’s not a matter of optimization because it’s an alpha. That’s a cheap explanation. It’s just heavy. Just as much as Windows in terms of ram usage.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Not sure what you have going but I have plasmashell running right now at 680MB.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      you should try damnsmalllinux, it had a revival recently. though the absolute smallest modern one is probably Slitaz? or alpine linux

      though you can definitely set up debian to use less than 500 ram today, kde/gnome are kinda hogs