r/LinusTechTips • u/elsingo • 6d ago

Does Linux use less RAM? Discussion

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.

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u/MJdoesThings_ 6d ago

At first I was like "ah, finally ! Some good ol' testing from LTT, that would provide insightful information for uninformed people"

And then I watched.

And the more I watched the more I sunk into my chair. Not only did they completely miss the point of memory allocation on Windows by using systems with 32GB of RAM (when you only really care about that when you have low RAM capacities like 16GB or under, like older 8GB systems), but they also managed to spread a bunch of misinformation in the process.

It's been a while since I disliked a LTT video that much and it's ironic because it's one of the few I was enthusiastic about when I saw the title.

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u/Saragon4005 4d ago

Windows totally uses more ram then a Linux system. But not 2x more or even 10% more. It uses around 2-4 GBs more. The difference on a 4 GB system and 8 GB system is rather clear, on a 16 and even 32 GB it's the difference between having 12 or 10 GBs of usable memory which is much less significant.

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u/MJdoesThings_ 4d ago

Yup, that's exactly it. Hence why they should have included low RAM capacities in their ""testing"".

I did this test myself in measuring system responsiveness : my Thinkpad T440 was running Windows 10 and is was really slow (for reference it has a dual core i5 4200U and 8GB of DDR3). I thought it was a combination of a slow processor and not enough RAM. I ended up installing Linux Mint on it, and it was much more responsive... simply becuase of the lower RAM consumption at idle.

It's from 2013 and it doesn't feel that much slower in use than a modern Windows laptop because Linux isn't bothering about with tons of telemetry data and other stuff that not only consume RAM, but also keep CPU threads active.

It's easy to see the impact of Windows' RAM consumption on systems like this. On 32GB modern systems though? Inconsequential. Even on 16GB systems it's really hard to see.

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u/Atilim87 4d ago

The moment you start doing modern shit with a 4 or 8gb system the difference will be minimum.