Are you sure? On my desktop, firefox itself takes up a good 300MB if you have ~ 5 tabs and keep it open for abit. I have 2GB, and frequently bump into swap.

It's clear to me now! Microsoft is Terran, Apple are the Protoss and Linux is the Zerg...

Ehh, have you TRIED x11 piped over SSH from one side of the planet to the other? It's not even usable. That's why projects like NX exist.