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 your comment have nothing to do with RAM usage and memory efficiency. You’re complaining about some annoying preinstalled OEM software [1], bad drivers, fan noise, battery life, and windows updates. That stuff isn’t great but a lot of it doesn’t have anything to do with Windows RAM efficiency itself.
If you download the Windows ISO from Microsoft and clean install you’ll have a pretty nice experience. I think Microsoft needs to crack down on OEM software additions.
As far as slow boot up times/slow initial setup I’ll remind you that Macs also have that as an issue during first boot and spend a lot of time doing initial indexing.
Linux mint is a great distro and I also prefer Linux to both Mac and Windows as well. Mostly my commentary is on the subject of people claiming Microsoft Windows is bad with RAM when we now see some Linux distros asking for more RAM than Windows. I think it’s quite clear that RAM isn’t the problem with Windows, it’s a lot of other things and the surrounding ecosystem.
[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.
> Reserving RAM doesn’t mean there’s a performance problem.
It does in my own experience (so it may not be a problem for you, I agree, but it is a problem for me). Because when OS allocates ~50% percents of RAM for itself and isn't letting it go, then other software simply can't use it. Therefore, you're limited. Your potential performance is capped at certain level just because your OS decided to allocate half or more of your system RAM. Why? Well, just because it wants to.
> have nothing to do with RAM usage or performance
Well, to be honest, most of them don't. But would you please explain then, why it takes around 20 seconds just to boot up, while for the aforementioned Linux Mint (and I'll clarify that it's currently 22.3 for me, the latest version, it was 22.1 at the time as far as I remember) it's only around ~3-4 second to take me to the login screen and then another second (at most) to load everything after I have logged in? Could you also, please, explain how does it happen that even GNOME's Nautilus file explorer takes less RAM and far less CPU usage than Microsoft's Explorer (and I won't even mention Thunar, that's kinda unfair)? What about "Start" menu in Windows which spiked up CPUs just by opening/closing? There's a lot of performance issues, both with RAM and CPU usage.
I'm not saying that these problems are unique to Windows, no; but saying that Windows doesn't have any performance issues is not really true.
> I think it’s quite clear that RAM isn’t the problem with Windows, it’s a lot of other things and the surrounding ecosystem.
I agree with you here. That's true. A large part of the problem comes not from the actual operating system, but from the application software. I thought once that well, maybe if RAM shortages will last longer than for just one or two years, that will be bad, but also, maybe - just maybe - some software developers will start to think at least a bit more about optimization...
> [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.
Does it behave like this all the time or just at specific moments?
I find on my Windows system it's only doing things when specific actions are happening.
Right now the antimalware executable process is using 196.4 MB of memory and 0% CPU for me as I type this.
When I download an executable from the Internet and run it, the CPU usage spikes to 8-10% briefly and the RAM usage goes up by 30MB or so.
I have a much higher-end CPU than that, 6 cores 12 threads (AMD Ryzen 5600X3D)
In my experience the executable is pretty much doing nothing unless I'm opening up an exe that's trying to elevate privileges or if it's doing an active periodic scan.
> Does it behave like this all the time or just at specific moments?
Strangely, but these were... specific moments, but not too specific. I mean, it wasn't running from the startup till the shutdown, but I also don't remember any specific triggers such as running untrusted applications or something similar. However, I guess that, according to the CPU usage, it most probably were full system scans. One thing remains unclear though: why, despite me turning off this feature, it was still quite frequently (I'd say way too frequently for normal operation) performing the full scan. I have no ideas. I'll not list everything I tried and checked here - because it would be too long - but the most "suspicious" thing I downloaded at the time was ImHex executable. And I don't think any anti-malware would spend ~80% of CPU processing power just to scan one relatively small app. I checked different things that could trigger it - but found nothing.
> Right now the antimalware executable process is using 196.4 MB of memory and 0% CPU for me as I type this.
Likely because it's idle as you type this. It wasn't using all of my CPU resources all the time, it's just that it could randomly spike up at some moment, run for ~1-2 minutes (sometimes more), drag the system into thermal throttling despite the active cooling (a bit of hyperbole here but still, it was really able to heat hardware up) and then disappear.
> if it's doing an active periodic scan.
As I mentioned, most likely that was the issue: frequent periodic full-disk scans.
For me, the worst thing was not that it was happening at all. To be honest, the worst thing was that I didn't understand why it was happening or how I could fix it. I just felt humiliated by the system that I, supposedly, owned. I know that I might have done something wrong or missed something, but... That still doesn't feel any good, you know.
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 your comment have nothing to do with RAM usage and memory efficiency. You’re complaining about some annoying preinstalled OEM software [1], bad drivers, fan noise, battery life, and windows updates. That stuff isn’t great but a lot of it doesn’t have anything to do with Windows RAM efficiency itself.
If you download the Windows ISO from Microsoft and clean install you’ll have a pretty nice experience. I think Microsoft needs to crack down on OEM software additions.
As far as slow boot up times/slow initial setup I’ll remind you that Macs also have that as an issue during first boot and spend a lot of time doing initial indexing.
Linux mint is a great distro and I also prefer Linux to both Mac and Windows as well. Mostly my commentary is on the subject of people claiming Microsoft Windows is bad with RAM when we now see some Linux distros asking for more RAM than Windows. I think it’s quite clear that RAM isn’t the problem with Windows, it’s a lot of other things and the surrounding ecosystem.
[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.