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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

#181

Post by jasomill »

reilly3000 wrote: post #121

> Linux's advantage is slowly shrinking This is garbage writing. Linux’s advantages are numerous and growing. Ubuntu ≠ Linux. WRT RAM requirements, Win 11’s 4GB requirement isn’t viable for daily use and won’t represent any practical machine configuration that has the requisite TPM 2 module. On the other side, the Linux ecosystem offers a wide variety of minimal distributions that can run on ancient hardware. Maybe I…

Yes, and to the the extent that you can do the same thing with Windows, it tends to be unsupported (field stripping desktop Windows to its core) or not viable ([legally] using embedded or server versions of Windows as desktop OSes).

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#182

Post by tuetuopay »

jasomill wrote: post #178
tuetuopay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 G…

Windows 11 idles at around 60 Hz in 120 Hz modes on my VRR ("G-SYNC Compatible") display when the "Dynamic refresh rate" option is enabled, and supports VRR for applications other than games (e.g., fullscreen 24 FPS video playback runs at 48 Hz* via VRR rather than mode switching, even with "Dynamic refresh rate" disabled). * The minimum variable refresh rate my display (LG C4) supports is 40 Hz.

Ah, then Windows 11 has at least one improvement compared to Windows 10 as far as user experience goes. Good to know, as I never made the jump

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#183

Post by tuetuopay »

bogwog wrote: post #171
tuetuopay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 G…

I use KDE + Nvidia, and last I looked into it, it only worked if you had one monitor enabled. That's fine for gaming, not for working. But it has been a while since I've tried it, maybe I should look into it again

AFAIK it’s very compositor-dependent. Works fine with disparate monitors on Sway + NVIDIA (1x144 VRR, 2x60 no VRR + 1x120 VRR when the TV is on).

The state of Wayland compositors move fast, so support may be here. Last thing I’m waiting for is sway 1.12 that will bring HDR.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#184

Post by array_key_first »

jasomill wrote: post #180
array_key_first wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Runtime-wise we use more garbage collected languages now. Java and such are great and can be very high performance, the real cost though is memory. GC languages need much more memory for book keeping, but they also need much more memory to be performant. Realistically, a Java app needs 10x the amount of memory as a similar C++ application to get good performance. That's because GC languages only perform well when mos…

Programs that manually allocate and deallocate memory to store "huge amounts of garbage" can easily incur more memory management overhead than programs using garbage collection to do the same. If a Java application requires an order of magnitude more memory than a similar C++ application, it's probably only superficially similar, and not only "because GC".

Well no because in a manual memory management language if you allocate 1 object, and then destroy it, and then reallocate another object then you've used 1 object amount of memory.

In Java, that's two objects, and one will be collected later.

What this means is that a C++ application running at 90% memory usage is going to use about the same amount of work per allocation/destruction as it would at 10% usage. The same IS NOT true for GC languages.

At 90% usage, each allocation and deallocation will be much more work, and will trigger collections and compactions.

It is absolutely true that GC languages can perform allocations cheaper than manual languages. But, this is only true at low amounts of heap usage. The closer you get to 100% heap usage, the less true this becomes. At 90% heap usage, you're gonna be looking at an order of magnitude of slowdown. And that's when you get those crazy statistics like 50% of program runtime being in GC collections.

So, GC languages really run best with more memory. Which is why both C# and Java pre-allocate much more memory than they need.

And, keep in mind I'm only referring to the allocation itself, not the allocation strategy. GC languages also have very poor allocation strategies, particularly Java where everything is boxed and separate.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#186

Post by WD-42 »

superkuh wrote: post #166
WD-42 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

These look really cool, thanks for sharing.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#187

Post by functional_dev »

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.

interesting, I never realized macOS compresses memory in place before swapping.. Linux just dumps straight to disk, no wonder it freezes

Found good visual explainer on this - https://vectree.io/c/linux-virtual-memory-swap-oom-killer-vs...

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#188

Post by lousken »

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.

Yea, Windows requirements are a meme. Maybe it could barely work with IoT LTSC for non interactive tasks, but definitely not with regular versions. Even windows 10 would hold just barely. Same with HDD space.

Current minimum specs should be more like

2 cores, 2ghz min with SSE4.2

128GB SSD

8GB RAM

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#189

Post by lousken »

panarky wrote: post #96
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…

If you run Windows 11 with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook on a 4GB machine you're gonna have a bad day.

If you run it on 8GB machine you have a bad day as well, no more space for Chrome.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#190

Post by danparsonson »

rantingdemon wrote: post #64
danparsonson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that 'lower memory usage' is only one of many benefits and, at least before the prices went mad, hardly the most important one on the list.

Practically speaking most people would want a GUI though.

Sure - what I mean is that being able to run an equivalent GUI to Windows (Gnome, KDE) using less memory than Windows requires is a benefit, but not the most important one to me. There are other bigger benefits to using Linux+GUI instead of Windows than saving on a bit of RAM.
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