Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#81

Post by dryarzeg » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #49

dryarzeg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I just logged in to my MacBook Air M2 (24GB RAM) with no programs open and it’s reserving 8.3GB of RAM and using 500MB of swap. My Framework laptop running CachyOS with KDE Plasma with nothing open except System Monitor reserves 4GB with 500MB in swap (I enabled swap for sleep to hibernate, normally there’s no swap). Reserving RAM doesn’t mean there’s a performance problem. Most of the things you’re talking about in…

> [1] I have to assume you’re talking about some third party antimalware program because the Microsoft one absolutely does not behave how you describe.

Editing without specifying that you have edited your reply is not very good, you know. But okay.

Actually, I'm talking about the Windows-shipped Microsoft Defender process (at least it seems to come from Microsoft Defender). I have not seen anything third-party installed on my laptop at the time, and it actually behaved just like I described. I should also remind you that it is a low-end laptop, that's just Intel Core i3-N305, it's not the most powerful CPU in the world - just 8 cores, 8 threads and 3.80 GHz of max boost frequency.

If you think that I'm lying, then just search for "antimalware executable high CPU usage" in any search engine. You will find a plenty of complaints and even some guides on how to deal with it.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#82

Post by jstanley » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:30 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #77

john01dav wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just stick XFCE on a modern minimal-ish (meaning not Ubuntu, mainly) distribution and you'll have this with modern compatibility. Debian and Fedora are both good options. If you want something more minimal as your XFCE basd, there are other options too.

XFCE is saddled with its GTK requirement, and GTK gets worse with every version. Even though XFCE is still on GTK3, that's a big downgrade from GTK2 because it forces you to run Wayland if you don't want your GUI frame rate arbitrary capped at 60 fps. For people wanting the old-fashioned fast and simple GUI experience, I recommend LXQt.

What use is there in display frame rates above 60 fps?

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#83

Post by srean » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:31 PM UTC

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…

For the life of me I couldn't understand why anyone would downvote parent comment. Nothing offensive or disagreeable here.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#84

Post by mrob » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #82

mrob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XFCE is saddled with its GTK requirement, and GTK gets worse with every version. Even though XFCE is still on GTK3, that's a big downgrade from GTK2 because it forces you to run Wayland if you don't want your GUI frame rate arbitrary capped at 60 fps. For people wanting the old-fashioned fast and simple GUI experience, I recommend LXQt.

What use is there in display frame rates above 60 fps?

It makes it easier to treat the computer as part of your own body, allowing operation without conscious thought, as you would a pencil or similar hand tool.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#85

Post by synergy20 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

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…

it's always the browser, each tab is at least 100MB, electronjs is also a browser. the gtk or whatever is nothing before the browser

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#86

Post by Lerc » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#87

Post by a155 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

Maybe if FOSS was less focused on reverse engineering proprietary technology they could make products people LIKE. I say this as someone who learned about firmware because of several listeners and one group having the aim of reverse engineering my new Apple ecosystem that is now falling apart after signal traps. My crime was working for an ISP and the media, but I reported on Scienos not techbros. Yawn.

I knew they were fucking with my virtual memory cause theirs sucks, the partition schemes on this Mac mini were ridiculous and the helpers weren’t stealing my information.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#88

Post by opengrass » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

I changed to devuan, now it uses 75 MB ram on idle.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#89

Post by senfiaj » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

oreally wrote: post #74

whatevaa wrote: post #38

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.

Today's browsers tend to be huge memory hogs too. Software's attitude of "there's always more memory" is coming back to bite them as prices of ram increase.

IMHO, browsers might prioritize execution speed somewhat more than memory. There is the Pareto tradeoff principle where it's unlikely to optimize all the parameters - if you optimize one, you are likely to sacrifice others. Also more memory consumption (unlike CPU) doesn't decrease power efficiency that much, so, more memory might even help with that by reducing CPU usage with caching.

Re: Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11

#90

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #86

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…

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.

well to start, you likely have 2 screen size buffers for current and next frame. The primary code portion is drivers since the modern expectation is that you can plug in pretty much anything and have it work automatically.