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Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

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Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#131

Post by foepys »

bee_rider wrote: post #59
heelix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu just raised the minimum RAM requirement from 4gb to 6. While it might have been possible to run anything with a GUI on 4, I can't imagine that is a good experience. When they turned Centos into streams, I cut my workstation over to Ubuntu. It has been a reasonable replacement. Only real issues were when dual booting Win10 horked my grub and snap being unable to sort itself on occasion. When they release 26 as…

Does Firefox really not unload the tabs in that case?

It does. You can also do it by hand via the right-click on tab menu

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#132

Post by bzzzt »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #107
senfiaj wrote: post #69

From my understanding this is an official statement, not a benchmark result. > The change isn't about the core operating system becoming resource-hungry. Instead, it reflects the way people use computers today—multiple browser tabs, web apps, and multitasking workflows, all of which demand additional memory. So it is more about the 3rd party software instead of OS or desktop environment. Actually, nowadays it's recom…

No because as far as we know 26.04 won't enable zswap or zram whereas Windows and MacOS both have memory compression technology of some sort. So Ubuntu will use significantly more memory for most tasks when facing memory pressure. Apparently it's still in discussion but it's April now so seems unlikely. Kind of weird how controversial it is considering DOS had QEMM386 way back in 1987.

QEMM386 for DOS did not have a memory compression feature. Only one of the later versions for Windows 3.1 did.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#133

Post by dijksterhuis »

senfiaj wrote: post #118
oreally wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You just read my comment very literally or carelessly. I mean in cases where it increases performance. It's not always that more memory = less CPU usage, but in many situations there is some tendency. For example, on older Windows, such as 98 or XP, applications draw directly on screen and had to redraw the parts of the exposed UI when windows were dragged (BTW, this is why many people, including myself, remember tha…

> on older Windows, such as 98 or XP, applications had to redraw the parts of the exposed UI when windows were dragged (BTW, this is why many people, including me, remember that famous cascading effect when applications were unresponsive on older Windows versions)

i remember this and had no idea that's why it would be doing that. thanks, i learned something today.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#134

Post by curt15 »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #35
sam345 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is changing. 8 GB will be more normal given ram shortages. See apples neo..

No, 8GB is still the bottom of the market, and the ram shortage is past its worst days already.

Chromebooks still start out at 4GB (example: https://www.acer.com/us-en/chromebooks/acer-chromebook-315-c...), and it's not like Google Chrome is lighter on RAM than Ubuntu's default browser.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#135

Post by Tade0 »

oreally wrote: post #110
senfiaj wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you enlighten me why it's misleading or uneducated?

[flagged]

You won't have cache misses if the reason why the application is using a lot of memory is that garbage collection is run less frequently than it could.

That is the case with every mainstream JS engine out there and is one of the many tradeoffs of this kind.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#136

Post by jonhohle »

senfiaj wrote: post #100
Lerc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know 2GB isn't very heavy in OS terms these days, but it's still enough to hold nearly 350 uncompressed 1080p 24-bit images. There's rather a lot of information in a single uncompressed 1080p image. I can't help but wonder what it all gets used to for.

I also believe that this memory usage might be decreased significantly, but I don't know how much (and how much is worth it). Some RAM usage might be useful, such as caching or for things related with graphics. Some is a cumulative bloat in applications caused by not caring much or duplication of used libraries. But I remember in 2016 Fedora Gnome consumed about 1.6GB of RAM on my PC with 2GB of RAM a decade ago. Con…

Buy why that much? The first computer I bought had 192MB of RAM and I ran a 1600x1200 desktop with 24-bit color. When Windows 2000 came out, all of the transparency effects ran great. Office worked fine, Visual Studio, 1024x768 gaming (I know that’s quite a step down from 1080p).

What has changed? Why do I need 10x the RAM to open a handful of terminals and a text editor?

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#137

Post by curt15 »

shevy-java wrote: post #43
goalieca wrote: post #20

I hear a lot from linux users that found gtk 2 era on x11 as pretty close to perfect. I know i had run ubuntu and after boot it used far less than 1GB. The desktop experience was perhaps even slightly more polished than what we have today. Not much has fundamentally changed except the bloat and a regression on UX where they started chasing fads. I suppose the most major change on RAM usage is electron and the bloated…

The whole linux stack got bigger though - just look at what you need now to compile stuff, cmake, meson/ninja, mesa, llvm and so forth. gtk2 was great; GTK is now a GNOMEy-toolkit only, controlled by one main corporation. Systemd increased the bloat factor too - and also gathers age data of users now ( https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 ). I guess one of the few smaller things would be wayland, but this ha…

>The whole linux stack got bigger though - just look at what you need now to compile stuff, cmake, meson/ninja, mesa, llvm and so forth

Those are all development tools. Has the runtime overhead grown proportionally, and what accounts for the extra weight?

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#138

Post by TacticalCoder »

I had a machine (an AMD 3700X with 32 GB of RAM and a fast NVMe SSD) on which I used to run Debian. Then about 2.5 years ago I bought a new one and gave my wife the 3700X: I figured out she'd be more at ease so I installed Ubuntu on it.

I couldn't understand why everything was that slow compared to Debian and didn't want to bother looking into it so...

After a few weeks: got rid of Ubuntu, installed her Debian. A simple "IceWM" WM (I use the tiling "Awesome WM" but that's too radical for my wife) and she loves it.

She basically manages her two SMEs entirely from a browser: Chromium or Firefox (but a fork of Firefox would do too).

It works so well since years now that for her latest hire she asked me to set her with the same config. So she's now got one employee on a Debian machine with the IceWM WM. Other machines are still on Windows but the plan is to only keep one Windows (just in case) and move the other machines to Debian too.

Unattended upgrades, a trivial firewall "everything OUT or IN but related/established allowed" and that's it.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#139

Post by winrid »

HauntingPin wrote: post #120
senfiaj wrote: post #69

From my understanding this is an official statement, not a benchmark result. > The change isn't about the core operating system becoming resource-hungry. Instead, it reflects the way people use computers today—multiple browser tabs, web apps, and multitasking workflows, all of which demand additional memory. So it is more about the 3rd party software instead of OS or desktop environment. Actually, nowadays it's recom…

Also, the Windows 11 requirements are ludicrous. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica... 4GB of RAM? What? I guess if your minimum is "able to start Windows and eventually reach the desktop", sure? I wouldn't even use Windows 11 with 8GB even though it would theoretically be okay.

Win11 IOT runs great on 4gb if that matters :) I have a few machines in the field running it and my java app, still over a gig free usually.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#140

Post by winrid »

jonhohle wrote: post #136
senfiaj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also believe that this memory usage might be decreased significantly, but I don't know how much (and how much is worth it). Some RAM usage might be useful, such as caching or for things related with graphics. Some is a cumulative bloat in applications caused by not caring much or duplication of used libraries. But I remember in 2016 Fedora Gnome consumed about 1.6GB of RAM on my PC with 2GB of RAM a decade ago. Con…

Buy why that much? The first computer I bought had 192MB of RAM and I ran a 1600x1200 desktop with 24-bit color. When Windows 2000 came out, all of the transparency effects ran great. Office worked fine, Visual Studio, 1024x768 gaming (I know that’s quite a step down from 1080p). What has changed? Why do I need 10x the RAM to open a handful of terminals and a text editor?

Higher res icons probably add a couple hundred megs alone
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