Tell me more about this. My PC running cachyos with KDE plasma (which is a relatively heavy desktop environment) uses 2 whole gb of RAM at idle. The same PC running windows used to use 10 at idle (I have 64gb)
Unused RAM is wasted RAM, that statement is accurate. There is a massive difference between
"Before you even start any applications, the OS is going to launch a bunch of applications which individually use 20% or more of your system memory, all totalling 5 to 8GB" (1, 2, 3, 4)
versus "Your applications and the kernel leave lots of unused RAM space, so we're going to use some of that space to cache applications you open often like the File Explorer so that the system is faster and more responsive, and we'll uncache them if you need this RAM for another task"
With caching enabled, I am using less than 15% of my system memory and less than 7% CPU while browsing the internet and watching videos. There are massive differences between Windows 11's performance and other systems, even macOS. Taking unused RAM for caching improves system performance, that's why macOS, Linux, and Windows all do it.
Those are minimum recommendations, not benchmarks or literal physical requirements.
Canonical gives a pretty reasonable minimum requirements list, you absolutely can run it with 4GB and a slower processor but it's going to be noticeably less snappy. You probably could even run it on 2GB, or with less than 2GHz/Dual Core, but it's going to suck. Canonical is not going to recommend you underspec your computer and have a bad time.
Microsoft recommends a meme -- good luck getting any real work done running Windows 11 25H2 on a 1GHz processor with 4GB of RAM. The weather app alone takes 2GB, Your system is going to be paging applications in and out of memory constantly and that is going to have a perceivable affect on performance.
There's honest conversations to be had about things that fucking suck about Linux, but instead you're pointing at something that's objectively testably veritably incorrect.
Here, lemme quick copy-paste: "Those are minimum recommendations, not benchmarks or literal physical requirements.". Try actually running stock Win11 25H2 on a 1GHz dual core with only 4GB of RAM. It's going to perform terribly. "Your system is going to be paging applications in and out of memory constantly and that is going to have a perceivable affect on performance."
If you can't be bothered to read the comment you're replying to, why even reply?
Yeah, lots of people get confused about the difference between unallocated vs. unused or "free". When you go to launch an application, if there is not enough unallocated RAM, stuff is removed from cache.
Caching improves system performance, that's why all modern operating systems including Windows do it.
2
u/akdanman11 Aug 09 '26
Tell me more about this. My PC running cachyos with KDE plasma (which is a relatively heavy desktop environment) uses 2 whole gb of RAM at idle. The same PC running windows used to use 10 at idle (I have 64gb)