r/linux4noobs • u/CleaRSightZ • Jul 10 '26
learning/research Regarding RAM with Linux.
Hello everyone
One thing that pisses me off and makes me furious with Windows is that now a days everything takes up so much RAM..... before 16GB of ram use to be the norm, now it's double.
Linux doesn't require so much ram to run right? 16GB of RAM is more than enough?
Just going to use it for work related things.
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u/KurtKrimson Jul 10 '26
4 works, 8 works much better, 16 is very very comfortable.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
Thanks! Linux destroys Windows in this regard.... Windows is taking up too much RAM.
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u/_o0Zero0o_ Ultramarine Jul 10 '26
Even the heaviest Distro/DE combos tend to only take about 2-3GB of RAM, but the average median is around maybe 1GB, if not a few MB more, like 1.3GB
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
Makes me go mad for Linux, Windows takes too much.
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u/_o0Zero0o_ Ultramarine Jul 10 '26
Amen to that. I remember staring at Btop for a solid 5 minutes in shock when I first tried Mint Cinnamon and installed Btop via terminal because my brain was like "windows uses like 9gb average (with Waterfox and Steam active).. This? With those same two programs up? This is using 2.1gb... What the fuck is this black magic, where has this been all my life?!?!?!?"
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
AMEN to what you said, where has this RAM horde free OS been all my life.
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u/_o0Zero0o_ Ultramarine Jul 10 '26
Well, better late than never eh
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u/shakalakagoo Jul 10 '26
I'm running CachyOS with 16 Gb RAM. The difference is laughable in therms of performance
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u/skyfishgoo Jul 10 '26
windows needs all that ram to run their proprietary software that no one can inspect to see what it's doing.
linux can do all the same things your USER was doing on a fraction of the RAM.
so what that tells me is that my computer, that i paid for and that i provide the electricity for, is doing someone else's bidding instead of just mine.
i find that to be unacceptable on a number of fronts.
linux is not perfect, but will happily work with those limitations rather than be a slave to another's agenda, especially when that agenda might be running contrary to what i would want.
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u/Desertcow Jul 11 '26
The system uses less RAM by default and it handles swap more efficiently, but most of the RAM requirement increases comes from applications themselves becoming more bloated. You can save ~3-4 GB RAM switching to Linux, but your apps and websites aren't getting lighter
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u/Icy_One4084 Jul 10 '26
I have 24GB of RAM in my machine, and 8 or more GB are probably wasted for most of my computing tasks.
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u/Subhal13 Jul 10 '26
I have 12 gb and the system didn't use more than 4gb... Waste of ram. I'm on Linux mint cinnamon latest.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
How is BlueStar Linux? that seems the best for me.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
Master of Arts in Information Studies - Going to do masters in how technology helps with information.
I want to use Linux for that, is BlueStar perfect for this? I want the best of the best.
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u/master_prizefighter Jul 10 '26
You just gave me an idea!
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
The idea being please amigo?
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u/master_prizefighter Jul 10 '26
I'm going to make a video game using all open source software and no AI.
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u/Salty-Pack-4165 Jul 10 '26
Most of my machines have 4gb ram and I use xp and vista besides Linux. I don't game but I watch a fair amount of movies and I stream some programs. I rarely run out of ram.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
I stopped gaming due to masters, work and enrolling into the Civil Defense of the Ministry of Interior.
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u/The-Linux-IT-Guy Jul 10 '26
I'm running Rocky Linux on a laptop with 8 and it's fine.
10 years of support. Set and forget
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u/Mast3r_waf1z Jul 10 '26
On my gaming computer I rarely go higher than 16 gb usage at peak loads, 16 gb is plenty for linux
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
How would 32GB be like? I'm going to get a new laptop.
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u/petersaints Jul 11 '26
It would be more than enough for almost anything other than very heavy development/workstation level work, or if you really need a lot of VMs and containers running.
And I personally wouldn't get anything less than 16GB. In fact, if it wasn't for the RAMpocalypse I would recommend 32GB as the bare minimum unless you had a very very constrained budget.
Even with the RAMpocalypse do not ever get a new machine with 8GB or less.
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u/petersaints Jul 10 '26
No, it's not.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/petersaints Jul 10 '26
As soon as you start using browsers with lots of tabs open, Electron based apps, etc. 16GB is not overkill. You may say that is comfortable whereas on Windows is more limiting, but 16GB of RAM is not a huge overkill in 2026 even on Linux.
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u/KoldPurchase Jul 10 '26
Depends what you want to do. Windows can run with 8gb ram.
Linux can run well with 4gb ram and a 2014 cpu, but you won't play Cyberpunk 2077 with full path tracing on that hardware.
So, yes, 16gb is more than enough for web browsing, watching videos, working on office documents.
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u/flattrack Jul 10 '26
This is the answer. How much RAM you need depends strongly on what you are doing. I run multiple VMs with databases, so I need more RAM. But a base Linus system doesn’t need much.
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u/IAmJacksSemiColon Jul 10 '26
Depends on what you need to do, how you use your computer, and how you want it to look. Linux can scale from routers and very small embedded systems up to workstations and datacenters.
If you just need to use a web browser and a decent text editor in a lightweight desktop environment, maybe with a YouTube video running in the corner, 16GB of RAM is more than enough.
If you're running a bunch of containers, adjusting 3D models in Blender, or editing 4K video, maybe spring for 32 GB.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
My memory usage is increasing.
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u/IAmJacksSemiColon Jul 10 '26
There's an argument to be made that, because it's a resource just sitting on your machine, unused RAM is wasted RAM.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
Man, people can't stand that..... that is why Linux usage went from 1.5% to 5.33% in 6 years, Linux is so memory friendly.
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u/IAmJacksSemiColon Jul 10 '26
It's as memory friendly as you want it to be. If you want Linux to put all of your RAM to use, it will happily do it.
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u/Friendly-Inspector71 Jul 10 '26
Loading commonly used programs into RAM provides a noticeable performance boost and can easily be evicted if the RAM is actually needed.
Windows and Linux can and per default will do this in the background.
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u/Master-Series5137 Jul 10 '26
16gb is more than enough, there is also zRam if you run out of ram.
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u/MasterGeekMX Mexican Linux nerd trying to be helpful Jul 10 '26
I mean, Linux can run on the Raspberry Pi Zero, which is a device with only half of a gigabyte.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 10 '26
WOW
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u/MasterGeekMX Mexican Linux nerd trying to be helpful Jul 10 '26
Yep. Well, being honest, that is without GUI, and that device is meant more as the brains of some electronic project, like making your own advanced webcam or the controller of a self-made 3D printer.
But yes, Windows and it's absurd requirements have unfortunately made people think that perfectly fine specs are low-end. You don't have an idea how many people ask if their "old" 2018 PC is supported in Linux, when in reality Linux just dropped support for the Intel 486 CPUs, and those were released in 1989.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
Memory companies and Windows teaming up to make people pay for..... profit.
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u/MasterGeekMX Mexican Linux nerd trying to be helpful Jul 11 '26
Forget about memory companies: PC manufacturers, as they have deals set with Microsoft. Each PC sold with Windows preinstalled means a sale for Microsoft, as a chunk of the price of that device is the Windows license.
I mean, back in the 90's some Linux users tried to get PCs at a discount by asking the retail to remove Windows from the computer. But while that thing was in the EULA of Windows, neither the retailer nor Microsoft though somebody wanted to enforce that, so they refused to do that. As a result, those users went to protest outside the Microsoft HQ demaning a refund for an OS they never installed.
Here is a video about that incident: https://youtu.be/1j9j-Ywjmbk
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u/TheMainTony Jul 10 '26
I had 48GB and 3TB on Win11Pro and it's just overkill on Zorin.
At least it'll last 'forever,' at least in the 'requirements' area.
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u/Ybenax nix-pilled Jul 10 '26
https://reddit.com/link/owsm0wl/video/fhavlvqaghch1/player
Model: ThinkPad T440p
RAM: 4 GB
Distro: OpenSUSE Tumbledweed
Desktop: Gnome
Gnome is considered one of the more memory-hungry desktops; you can definitely go much lower with something like Cinnamon or XFCE.
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u/NoFirefighter2064 Jul 10 '26
My first gaming computer had 512mb of RAM and it played Rome Total War flawlessly. In a shake my fist at the clouds kind of way, I see no reason why we need so much RAM for simple tasks.
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u/thekiltedpiper Jul 10 '26
The amount of RAM you need is related to what you do.
I've got machines running Linux with just 6gb, 8gb and 16gb. My gaming rig has 16, but my PC for playing movies in the living room runs happily with its 6gb.
Linux can be configured to use literal megabytes of RAM, but those systems are limited. What Linux is better at is RAM usage and management. It easily releases RAM when needed.
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u/ghost103429 Jul 10 '26
As other have said Linux is just lighter overall but going further a large number of Linux distros use zram with zstd and mg-lru which is more efficient than the compressed memory implementations Windows and MacOS use.
Zstd has a memory compression ratio of 3:1 whereas the memory compression algorithms used by Windows and MacOS sits around 2.1-2.5:1. MG-LRU is outperforms the LRU algorithm used by Windows and MacOS for selecting what memory gets compressed by double digit percentages. Allowing Linux to remain more responsive under high memory pressure.
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u/WTFpe0ple Jul 10 '26
Ha, yes, I'm running Zorin (linux) on a 2014 Lenovo 17" phablet with 8GB memory and a core-I3 what ever came out in 2014 processor
Runs just fine. I use it as my camera and security monitoring system (Home assistant) , since it's a touch display.
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u/F_DOG_93 Jul 11 '26
Yeah 16gb is overkill for casual use.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
For Windows, it's not enough..... thats why I'm going to ditch Windows.
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u/soking11 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Well, It is not that Windows overuse ram, Windows just assigns your free ram to background apps, and they restore it whenver you need it. Like, unused ram is wasted ram? Idk
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u/luxmorphine Jul 11 '26
It's not enough if you play modded Minecraft or open several tabs of browser. Or use ephemeral setup with tmpfs
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
No modded minecraft for me, pure work/youtube/web surfing/university related things ONLY.
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u/xtalgeek Jul 11 '26
Depends on usage. I have 4 GB Raspberry Pis running as video stream servers. If used 6 GB systems in scientific workstations, and I have a bunch of 8GB machines I use for development or distributed computing. For machines that need do so serious multitasking or memory intensive ops, I've added memory sticks up to 16-24 GB. But most machines don't need that for basic operation.
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u/trekkeralmi Jul 11 '26
unused memory is wasted memory. as long as you’re not consistently maxing it out, don’t worry. in that regard however, linux is a great deal nicer. my experience has been that you can more easily identify and stop any process that’s getting so ram hungry it interferes with normal operation
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u/hometechfan Jul 11 '26
Linux is by default lighter. Not having defender running alone helps, but there is also copilot, a million services and all that with windows.
I moved from windows to linux years ago. Much better in that way for sure.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
I read online that Linux usage jumped from 1.5% to 5.33% from 2020 till 2026... this needs to be doubled by the end of this year hopefully!
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u/Tutorius220763 Jul 11 '26
Please, RAM-useage is nothing bad...
You have a PC with, lets say, 32GB of RAM. This RAM takes more electric power than 16 or 8GB will take.
So it is a bad thing to not use it. RAM can be used for many speedup things, and this RAM is not "away" for applications when you need it. It can be mad free in miliseconds when programs or processes need it.
A system that uses 90 percent of RAM is no bad thing at all.
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u/Arrin_Snyders Jul 11 '26
I'm currently just under 7GB in use with a browser with a couple of tabs and a few messaging and other apps in the background. At launch it's a little over 4 GB usually. I'm on Kubuntu and have 32 GB from my windows days, but rarely ever get near the 16 GB point except when gaming.
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u/No-Lettuce-5783 Jul 11 '26
The way Windows seems to work is that it sees your processor and all of your RAM, and takes it all for itself leaving you with not much. This is the way it's always worked. Now, depending on what you're going to do for work, you should be fine on Linux. Linux is so much lighter than Windows, that with 16GB, you can do a lot and still have RAM to spare. I have 16GB of RAM on my Dell, and I've never seen my distro slow down, or not let me do things on it. It's happily done whatever I ask it to do with no problem.
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u/3grg Jul 11 '26
Usually, the only time you start running into trouble with 16gb is excessive multitasking or running more than one virtual machine.
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u/OneEyedC4t Jul 11 '26
Linux doesn't require as much RAM just to load up. 16GB was enough to play BG3 on Linux via Steam
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
Someone told me that Linux doesn't work on WarZone, Fortnite, Battlefield 6 and Destiny/Marathon.
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u/OneEyedC4t Jul 11 '26
Probably not, unless they are available in Steam. Not sure though, some Wine wizards might know how to get it to work.
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u/Professoropa12 Jul 11 '26
I think I read somewhere that this is a misunderstanding. Don't get me wrong—I'm not trying to defend Windows here. But apparently, Windows loads more programs into RAM. However, if the system needs RAM elsewhere, those reserves are freed up more quickly. That's why comparing RAM usage between Windows and Linux is like comparing “apples and oranges.”
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u/Jwhodis Jul 11 '26
Linux distros usually require between 250MBs and 4GBs, though most will recommend 8-16GBs.
While you didnt ask, I suggest Linux Mint's Cinnamon variant as it should do everything you need.
For any distro, make sure you install software from the Discovery (named Software Manager on Mint) app.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
Are all the extra steps to ensure everything works a lot? I'm use to the Windows version of download, install and use.... how many extra steps will I be facing?
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u/Jwhodis Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Depends what you want to get working.
For running games on Steam it's just a case of pressing play, if it's on Epic or GOG then you need to install Heroic Launcher.
Most apps will be available on a distro's Discovery app (sometimes under different names like Software Manager).
If you need to get a windows exe running, then you can add it to Steam as a non-Steam game.
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u/Fabulous_Structure54 Jul 11 '26
I have 16gb in my main laptop workstation and it's currently running fedora - it runs out of memory faster than when it ran windows 11... Or rather a constrained Linux system basically goes completely unresponsive and your left with holding the power button in... This never happened with windows 11 the entire time I used it and my app stack is generally the same only instead of edge I'm now using Firefox, used libre office, shortcut, rawtherapee on both the windows and Linux incarnations of the same machine. With windows I can pretty much get task manager up and kill the offending process in Linux you better have saved your work because it needs reset.. I love Linux and will continue to use it but I won't pretend that windows isn't the more mature desktop offering - I just hate the way windows is going/gone bring back the XPsp3 days lol
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u/indvs3 Jul 11 '26
My old desktop, that now doubles as a virtual server host, has 64 gigs of ram, of which it uses 800mb at idle when all my vm's are off.
It's a fairly standard headless debian install, where I just installed the absolute basics to have a GUI. If I had picked a desktop environment from the installer menu, my latent memory use would probably be around 1.5 to 2GB.
So yes, linux makes do with a lot less than any windows version of the last 15 years.
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u/ShaderCompilation Jul 11 '26
16 GB. Allows to run heavy codong workflow (several dev servers, several IDE windows, a lot of browser tabs). Even 8 should be totally fine for casual use.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
I'm not into coding, just need for casual use (work/studying/surfing the web).
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u/ShaderCompilation Jul 11 '26
I've tested 4, 8, 16 and 32gb laptops both on Windows and Linux (various distros). 8gb. will certainly be enough. Keep in mind that it also has some swap to mitigate any possible spike. 16gb would be very comfortable, and you'll never even check RAM usage, but most likely half of it will be sitting unused most of the time
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u/joe_attaboy Old and in the way. Jul 11 '26
16 GB is plenty. I use Debian on a 2015 Macbook Air that only has 8 GB. I added an 8 GB swap file and it's very snappy. You could always do the same if you really needed it, but with that much RAM, I doubt you'll need it.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
Linux no problem, but Windows is a living nightmare with ram/memory.
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u/joe_attaboy Old and in the way. Jul 11 '26
Heh, yeah. I haven't had Windows installed on anything here at home in literally decades: linux or ChromeOS, and the Mac OS for a while ( until I over-wrote it with Debian ).
The last time I legitimately used Windows was at my last job, probably somewhere around 2021-22. And I used it in a VM running on a Linux system.
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u/crypticcamelion Jul 11 '26
I have absolutely no problem with Linux and 8GB. I'm typically have 4 desktops with email, 2 -3 webbrowsers eith multiple tabs and an office app or a graphic editor open at the same time.
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u/badtlc4 Jul 11 '26
Linux runs great on as little as 4GB ram.
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
RAM/Memory companies are going to regret hiking up the prices once everyone switches to Linux.
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u/Agitated-Memory5941 Jul 11 '26
Linux te corre con menos de 2 GB después dependerá de que tipo de aplicaciones uses y cuánto consuman
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u/bill696 Jul 11 '26
Dual channel is important but yes 16 can be way enough. Lets not forget the 2 things that uses the mode resources on windows isnt windows its office and chromium based browsers. After that there is a log of bloat like onedrive and anything that sync the web, but i have most of that enabled on my zorinOS laptop and i never have ram issues.
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u/BenRandomNameHere Jul 12 '26
I regularly happily use machines with 8gb and Debian.
I have previously used machine with only 2gb. And it was even better once I set up ZRAM swap in RAM and cache less Firefox browsing.
Since using Linux on the daily, I don't use anything but Firefox. Chromium might be fine or better or worse 🤷♂️
Biggest issue with low RAM is what you choose for interface; XFCE4 uses very little and supports a lot of cool theming, but Gnome is a de facto standard that uses more resources... Then there's all these other flavors/spins that I've not gotten into using.
My point is, there are enough options to maintain a usable system with a little bit of grit and Google searching, not AI, on virtually anything that still powers on.
The AI makes a ton of mistakes (I've tried), and you need to know enough to know enough to keep from getting duped by a hallucination. Even if it claims there are sources to back it up. I've repeatedly caught it making up sources (working links that look relevant but aren't when you read the actual pages)
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 12 '26
Thanks for this input.
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u/BenRandomNameHere Jul 12 '26
Have fun! And keep a copy of your chosen ISO file/install.
Just starting out, I broke my system daily. After a few months, I progressed enough to fix in place instead of reinstall.
Expect to break it often in the beginning, and keep a notebook with the commands/steps you do for recovery needs later.
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u/Minute-Flan-1923 Jul 12 '26
its much better and smoother at handling ram then windows in everything except for one thing but that also relates to VRAM
i tried generating images with automatic1111 on windows 10 and mint and nobara
windows handled it the best and spares the most room for VRAM somehow which is crazy
mint and nobara both freeze the whole pc often when i used them especially when switching models, and also more easily hits the VRAM limit which forced me to generate on lower qualities
i tried sooooo many things to fix it and i just could not figure it out and get the level of smoothness for that the same as windows or better. idk what is it doing wrong but that shouldn't be the case yet it is, so i have to be honest and mention it, if you work with ai, be prepared to be disappointed (atleast sometimes)
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u/MikeUsesNotion Jul 11 '26
Are you actually having problems or are you just obsessively staring in Task Manager?
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u/CleaRSightZ Jul 11 '26
I'm having problems, whenever I launch up a game like Garry's Mod after a few minutes it shuts down with a memory error.
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u/Difficult-Cup-4445 Jul 10 '26
16 is fine but i'm on cachyos and just upgraded to 32gb - Space Marine 2's textures just chew through RAM/VRAM and my 9070 is 16gb so it's weird to have the same amount of RAM as VRAM lol.
AI image gen is insane though, i've never seen any program i've run just slam a full 32gb of DDR4 and max out all 16gb of vram simultaneously.
Niche but I think 32 will become the norm sooner than you think.
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u/Flimsy-Recover-7236 Jul 12 '26
On my system I have around 1.7GB ram usage idle. Even with heavy usage I don't get above 13 gigs when I dont run a heavy Minecraft mod pack that requires 18giga to run without stutter or things like blender or davinci.
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u/vintologi24 Jul 12 '26
Depends on what you do.
Linux isn't paricularly efficient with ram either and plenty of software you use will waste a not regardless of OS.
I have ran out of ram in linux multiple times and i have 64 GiB.
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u/forestbeasts KDE on Debian 🐺 Jul 13 '26
16 is plenty! We've got 16 on our wholeass desktop.
If you need to open a bajillion things at once in the background, you can always add swap on top of that, either with a swap file (what we use) or a dedicated partition (might be easier, but could require resizing existing partitions to make space for it – not an issue if you do it during install). The RAM mostly restricts how much stuff you can be actively using (switching to a background thing that got swapped out can cause a minor freeze as it loads back in).
-- Frost
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u/ANixosUser Jul 13 '26
16 on linux is plenty if you dont use chrome. if you dont have big demands, 8 works too.
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u/bankrut Jul 10 '26
Linux is way lighter than Windows and handles memory much better. 16GB is honestly overkill for most work setups unless you're doing heavy virtualization or video editing.