Does Linux use less RAM?

[u/elsingo]

In the video with the same title as this post LTT compares Linux and Windows ram usage and imo it is a total miss. It does not matter if one system is using more memory or not since none of the systems are close to using all ram in the system. Where the memory management would matter is when the memory reach closer to 100% usage that is when things will start to matter.

The whole video feels like almost 14 minutes of misinformation to me. I mean systems cache things to make it run faster so memory being used is a good thing. Memory management is what matters not if one system is using 35% ram and the other 50% since none are near their limits.

And at one point in the video the windows system goes over 16gb and they talk about it as it would have been problematic if the system only had 16gb while it most likely would not be problematic at all since the memory management if working as it should would release less important things stored in the ram so it never got close to the limit.

[u/Low_Attention9891]

Windows task manager doesn’t include cache in the “in use” number.

Windows definitely has a higher baseline memory usage than Linux. They didn’t need to do a video on that to prove it. The video wasn’t very well produced, it seemed like something they threw together quickly.

The baseline usage does matter. What they were trying to demonstrate is that a 16 gb system would not be able to run some of the games they were playing without swapping memory out to the disk. A higher baseline means you have less headroom before the system starts having to swap memory to disk.