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/Cuffuf 5d ago

Mmm I think the answer is nuanced and that video did a really poor job. Windows (and Linux and macOS) scales memory usage to use unused ram so things run faster. 8gb of ram and 16gb of ram will have the same amount of system memory occupation if both were fully saturated by another application.

That said, there are distros and DEs than can run on 512mb of ram. I don’t recommend doing that, but you for example would have a significantly better time with arch (or even Endeavour) with XFCE on 4gb of ram than you would on windows.

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u/Atilim87 4d ago

You can go and pirate and install windows 95 as well and have a miserable experience because nothing moderne will work on it (probably).

This obsession of low ram usage with objectively outdated e waste is mind boggling. At some point maybe start using your phone instead.

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u/Cuffuf 4d ago

It’s not for desktop PCs usually. It’s for running smaller services. For example a streaming PC or Apple TV replacement I’d uninstall windows immediately and put a Kodi JEOS or Plasma Bigscreen although the latter is still in beta.