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footprint
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footprint /n./ 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece
of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed
program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also toeprint.
3. "RAM footprint": The minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other
program takes; this figure gives one one an idea of how much will
be left for other applications. How actively this RAM is used is
another matter entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis and
software bloat can expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point
of making it nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is,
thankfully, limited to operating systems so stupid that they don't
do virtual memory -- ESR]
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