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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

#31

Post by danparsonson »

jmclnx wrote: post #27

>Linux's advantage is slowly shrinking Maybe in some ways, yes. But there are distros out there that can run easily in as little as 1G RAM. And I heard people have used it with far less. I also remember hearing Ubuntu moved to default to Wayland, if true I have to wonder if defaulting to Wayland is part of the problem because Gnome / KDE on Wayland will use far more memory than FVWM / Fluxbox on X11. FWIW, you can do…

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.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#32

Post by nickpsecurity »

I was testing them on a HP laptop I bought for $200 with 4GB of RAM.

Windows, its default, used so much memory that there was not much left for apps.

Ubuntu used 500MB less than Windows in system monitor. I think it was still 1GB or more. It also appeared to run more slowly than it used to on older hardware.

Lubuntu used hundreds of MB less than Ubuntu. It could still run the same apps but had less features in UI (eg search). It ran lightening fast with more, simultaneous apps.

(Note: That laptop's Wifi card wouldn't work with any Linux using any technique I tried. Sadly, I had to ditch it.)

I also had Lubuntu on a 10+ year old Thinkpad with an i7 (2nd gen). It's been my daily machine for a long time. The newer, USB installers wouldn't work with it. While I can't recall the specifics, I finally found a way to load an Ubuntu-like interface or Ubuntu itself through the Lubuntu tech. It's now much slower but still lighter than default Ubuntu or Windows.

(Note: Lubuntu was much lighter and faster on a refurbished Dell laptop I tested it on, too.)

God blessed me recently by a person who outright gave me an Acer Nitro with a RTX and Windows. My next step is to figure out the safest way to dual boot Windows 11 and Linux for machine learning without destroying the existing filesystem or overshrinking it.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#33

Post by dangus »

sam345 wrote: post #29
dangus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the correct answer that Canonical sucks, I would argue that “efficiency” is not a selling point to get someone to use a desktop operating system. Mainstream users and business organizations don’t really understand that concept and would prefer to see how the operating system enables their use cases and workflows.

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

Apple under-speccing their machines like they’ve been doing since the dawn of time is not some kind of indicator of any trends. You can buy $350 PC laptops that come with 12GB of RAM (example: https://www.staples.com/asus-vivobook-x1404-14-laptop-intel-...)

RAM shortages will be quite temporary. Making predictions based on individual component shortages has never been a winning strategy in the history of the industry. Next you’ll tell me that graphics cards will be impossible to get because of blockchain.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#34

Post by Someone1234 »

Windows 11's 4 GB minimum is dishonest. You cannot reasonably run it on that little, it is far too bloated at this point. Even LTSC benefits from 6 GB, and that is substantially cut-down compared to retail/enterprise.

I'd say Windows 11's real minimal is 8 GB in 2026, with the recommended being 16 GB.

PS - And even at 8 GB, it hits 100% usage and pages under moderate load or e.g. Windows Update running in the background.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#35

Post by Our_Benefactors »

sam345 wrote: post #29
dangus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the correct answer that Canonical sucks, I would argue that “efficiency” is not a selling point to get someone to use a desktop operating system. Mainstream users and business organizations don’t really understand that concept and would prefer to see how the operating system enables their use cases and workflows.

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.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#36

Post by keithnz »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #32

I was testing them on a HP laptop I bought for $200 with 4GB of RAM. Windows, its default, used so much memory that there was not much left for apps. Ubuntu used 500MB less than Windows in system monitor. I think it was still 1GB or more. It also appeared to run more slowly than it used to on older hardware. Lubuntu used hundreds of MB less than Ubuntu. It could still run the same apps but had less features in UI (eg…

windows always optimistically loads a lot, almost no matter how much ram you have

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#37

Post by bjackman »

The article itself acknowledges that the headline is bullshit:

> 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

Basically the change reflects the fact that, at this level of analysis (how much RAM do I need in my consumer PC), the OS is irrelevant these days. If you use a web browser then that will dominate your resource requirements and there's nothing Linux can do about that.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#38

Post by whatevaa »

Win11 barely works with 4GB. Like, you can have a browser with youtube on and that's it, 90%+ memory usage. I know because that is one of my media PC (instead of smart tv).

Can't move to Linux because it's Intel Atom and Intel P-state driver for that is borked, never fixed.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#39

Post by dryarzeg »

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 am not an Apple fan, so I'll just tell my story. And yeah, it may be biased, and I may not understand something important.

So around ~3 years ago or so I bought a lightweight low-end laptop (Intel Core i3, 14 inch display, 8GB of RAM) for everyday stuff so I could easily bring it with me everywhere I need to go (I mean, everywhere I would need it). It came with Windows 11 pre-installed. Now, for you to understand, previously, like ~10 years ago or so I had a Windows 7 system and it was pretty neat. And I remembered when people were switching from Windows 7 to Windows 8 or 10, they blamed the new OS version just like right now the Windows 11 was blamed; yet everyone got used to it, it received some fixes, improvements, etc; so I thought "well, maybe Windows 11 is not so bad, I should try it out at least just for the sake of curiosity".

And now, the clean installation of the Windows 11 that came to my was requiring like ~20 seconds to fully boot up to the login window. I know that my laptop is not best of the best, but still... After a startup, with no apps opened, there was like ~4 GB of RAM usage just out of nowhere; so effectively I was limited to ~4GB of RAM to run something I want to. Bluetooth drivers were terrible (at the time) - sometimes I was able to connect to my headphones and sometimes I wasn't, while they were working with all of my other devices perfectly. Then there was also this hellish "Antimalware Executable" - and I know how it sounds, I have nothing against anti-virus software, but when it randomly shows up several times per day, eats all of your processing power (like ~80% of CPU usage, and note that I have 8 cores ~3 GHz here), heats up your laptop to the point that fan starts screaming... that was not very good, to speak softly. Battery usage was also a disappointment - sometimes it couldn't last for just 3 hours, while the most heavy thing I was doing during that time was compilation of some software.

I was trying, I was re-configuring, I was applying patches... and finally I got fed up with all of this bloat, broken updates and other garbage. So I just backed up all of my important files and data to external drive and installed Linux Mint (because in this particular case I just needed working laptop). And wow, it just worked! Now at startup I get like ~1 GB RAM usage at most (this actually depends on the DE I use, so numbers could be different from time to time), battery life improved, no more weird Bluetooth issues, no more random bloatware... it just works, and that's it.

I know that distros like Mint are focused on stability and efficiency, so maybe the comparison is a bit unfair. But hell, even while I don't have anything against Windows 7 or Windows 8, the recent Windows 11 is a real combination of bloatware and spyware. So performance and memory efficiency is, actually, the problem here. Or at least it was a problem last time I tried it.

Now, again, I may be wrong somewhere, maybe I missed something out. If I did - please point it out.

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