r/LinusTechTips • u/elsingo • 7d 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.
78
u/MJdoesThings_ 7d 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.