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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

#161

Post by dangus »

Alifatisk wrote: post #28
dangus wrote: post #5

I imagine the choice of desktop environment has most to do with RAM requirements in Linux. Unrelated to this, despite Ubuntu’s popularity, I think it’s one of the worst distro choices out there, especially for including old kernels for essentially no discernible reason. I wouldn’t go so far as defending Microslop but I do get tired of the Apple fanboys accusing Windows of being bloated and running poorly. They seem t…

> I wouldn’t go so far as defending Microslop > I do get tired of the Apple fanboys accusing Windows of being bloated and running poorly. > Windows has a lot of problems but performance and memory efficiency is not one of them. I can't even describe how much your experience differs from mine. I would never have imagine someone to utter such sentence about Windows in todays day and age. For everyone else reading this,…

I also use Everything. But I'm not sure how Windows Search not being the best has much to do with the system's overall RAM usage.

Explorer works fine for me but File Pilot does look cool. I'll give it a try. (Good luck replacing Finder on Mac, is that even possible?)

I only use Windows for desktop and if I was clean installing I'd probably switch it to Linux. My laptop is Linux then I share a macOS system with my partner which I occasionally use for things that require Mac.

I wouldn't say I suffer at all with Windows. It's fine. It runs, it performs well, it's stable. I can't speak to other people who have different experiences. I usually assume they're using some kind of OEM abomination while I used the plain ISO downloaded from Microsoft, and I've already gone through the ~10 minutes of effort to turn off the annoying stuff.

I sold my personal Mac and switched to Linux on Framework 13" after Liquid Glass came out. It was almost as jarring and poorly executed as Windows 8. Well, okay, maybe that's going too far.

(The other problem with my MacBook was the tiny amount of storage was growing difficult to work with, much easier to toss a 2TB SSD into a Framework and finally be done with worrying about storage)

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#162

Post by hnarn »

I switched to Debian a long time ago for both desktops and servers. For me personally I don’t see what value prop Ubuntu even has anymore, apart from maybe having ZFS in the kernel. Support maybe? I’ve never used it personally so I don’t know if it’s any good, but for any serious shop willing to spend money on support I’d probably go with RHEL anyway.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#163

Post by akdev1l »

worthless-trash wrote: post #30
akdev1l wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS handles memory pressure better than Linux imo (at least for interactive use cases) I have seen MacOS overcommit up to 50% of memory and still have the system be responsive. Yesterday I filled up my ram accidentally on Fedora and even earlyoom took several minutes to trigger and in the meantime the system was essentially non-responsive

This is with earlyoom/systemd-oomd enabled ?

Yeah, Fedora ships systemd-oomd

It did eventually work to but it took a while. It also did not killed the culprit runaway processes somehow but it did kill enough stuff for me to regain control of the system.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#164

Post by tuetuopay »

bogwog wrote: post #111
tuetuopay wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of gaming, not much. However, now that I'm used to a 144Hz main monitor, there is no world where I would get back. You just feel the difference. So basically, no use when you've not tasted 120+Hz displays. And don't because once you do, you won't go back.

I have a 165hz display that I use at 60hz. Running it at max speed while all I'm doing is writing code or browsing the web feels like a waste of electricity, and might even be bad for the display's longevity. But for gaming, it really is hard to go back to 60.

Mine supports variable refresh rate, which means for most desktops tasks (I.e when nothing is moving), it runs at 48Hz.

Incredibly, Linux has better support than windows for it on the desktop: DWM runs full blast, while sway supports VRR on the desktop. Windows will only enable it for games (and games that support it). Disclaimer: Wayland compositor required.

It’s not enabled by default on e.g. sway because on some GPU and monitor combos, it can make the display flicker. But if you can, give it a try!

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#165

Post by NekkoDroid »

duckmysick wrote: post #123

For comparison, here are the official hardware recommendations for Debian: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch03s04.en.html "With Desktop" has 1GB minimum and 2GB recommended - along with Pentium 4, 1GHz cpu.

> "With Desktop" has 1GB minimum and 2GB recommended - along with Pentium 4, 1GHz cpu.

This seems like a recommendation to just really get to the desktop itself + maybe some light usage. Anything more than that and the "recommendation" is fairly useless with the memory hog of apps that are commonly used.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#166

Post by superkuh »

WD-42 wrote: post #113
superkuh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I still develop Gtk2 applications today. It's a very snappy and low resource usage toolkit aimed entirely at desktop computers. None of that "mobile" convergence. I suppose you could put Gtk2 applications into containers of some sort but since Gtk2 has (luckily) been left alone by GNOME for decades it's a stable target (like NES or N64 is a stable target) and there's no need for it. Most of the bloat these days…

Can you point us to some of these gtk2 applications that you’ve been writing recently?

Sure, one is connmapperl. It is a server/client application where the server is a GUI map of the world that shows all the various clients collected IP established connections via geoip lookup (local). It stores everything in sqlite db and has a bunch of config/filtering options; http://superkuh.com/connmapperl.html Technically a fork of X11 connmap I made because I coulnd't get it to run on my old X11, but with many, many more features (like offline whois from raw RIR dumps, the db, the hilbert mapping, the replays of connection history, etc).

Another one is memgaze, a program to vizualize linux process virtual memory spaces as RGB images and explore them using various binary visualization and sonification tools. Ie, you can just click a hilbert map of all processes then in the new window click around inside the image of that particular process' virtual ram and then listen to it interpreted as an 8bit wav, or find an extract images, for example. Or search for strings, run digraph analysis, etc. http://superkuh.com/memgaze-page.html

Or feeed.pl, my very quick and low resource usage feed reader for 1000+ feeds written in Perl/Gtk2 that is text only (no html, no images, etc). It is really handy for loading .opml files and finding and fixing broken feeds using the heuteristics I hard coded in to find feed urls. http://superkuh.com/blog/2025-09-13-2.html

These are a few I made 2025-26 that other people might care to use. But I have a lot more that just scratch my own particular itches. Like a Perl/Gtk2 version of MS Paint that interprets arbitrary loaded and painted images as sound, or the things that I use to monitor my ISP uptime/speed, etc.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#167

Post by senfiaj »

mpol wrote: post #94
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…

It's not just the applications, the installer doesn't even start up with 1GiB of memory. With 2GiB of memory it does start up. You could (well, I would :) ) blame it on the Gnome desktop, but it is very different from what I would have expected. I just tested this with 25.10 desktop, default gnome. With 24.04 LTS it doesn't even start up with 2GiB.

So, you mean when RAM is 2 GiB with 25.10 the installer started up but didn't with 24.04? What about being able to install and then boot the installed Ubuntu?

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#168

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

fxj wrote: post #124

God I miss openstep and CDE. It needs 16MB RAM (yes MB!) and together with a lighweight firefox clone you get everything you need. Eye candy is nice to have but not at that cost.

> I miss openstep and CDE

Why miss things that are still around? I dunno how close GNUstep is, but the original CDE is still here, open source and ported to most unix-likes.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#170

Post by rdsubhas »

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…

That's subjective and I would be more comfortable if that's called as Recommended memory, not Minimum memory.

Minimum memory as in this change sets a completely different expectation.

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