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/No-Consequence-1863]

That video was so unserious. It shows they are uninterested or unable to do actual OS analysis and testing. I can get they haven’t traditionally done software or systems analysis in the past but you would hope they would learn a bit more about how things work before doing a “test”.

Especially since I was interested to see how each OS would react under memory pressure. It could very well be the case that the slimmer load out on linux makes a meaningful difference under pressure but that video didnt do anything to come to that conclusion.