Difference between Windows and Linux. Windows would only use what it needs. Linux pre-empts more and fills the RAM for what coul dbe needed.
It used to stress the shit out of me when I switched to Linux as I’d gotten used to opening task manager and seeing 90% free RAM. On Linux I’d be seeing 10% free and panicking thinking it was a resource hog.
I had a feeling that ‘factoid’ may be out of date!
Since I learnt it about the time of Windows XP when we were shown examples of how Linux and Windows memory management differed.
It all made sense why Linux seemed to have full RAM even after a big upgrade but WinXP gave the ‘illusion’ of having lots of free RAM to use.
~
20yrs ago!
I think we used SuSE Linux 7.3!
I still hold a savage hatred of all RPM-based distros after dealing with the hell of early 2000’s editions (Redhat, Mandrake & Suse). Though I did like SuSE KDE’s colours when it worked!
It would stress me even more to see a lot of RAM doing nothing, that would be a shame! ;-)
Difference between Windows and Linux. Windows would only use what it needs. Linux pre-empts more and fills the RAM for what coul dbe needed.
It used to stress the shit out of me when I switched to Linux as I’d gotten used to opening task manager and seeing 90% free RAM. On Linux I’d be seeing 10% free and panicking thinking it was a resource hog.
The Linux-way is the best way.
I use Arch btw ;)
Both OSes do pre-caching and for both the standard tools to check usage nowadays ignore pre-cached elements when counting RAM usage.
I had a feeling that ‘factoid’ may be out of date! Since I learnt it about the time of Windows XP when we were shown examples of how Linux and Windows memory management differed. It all made sense why Linux seemed to have full RAM even after a big upgrade but WinXP gave the ‘illusion’ of having lots of free RAM to use. ~ 20yrs ago!
I think we used SuSE Linux 7.3!
I still hold a savage hatred of all RPM-based distros after dealing with the hell of early 2000’s editions (Redhat, Mandrake & Suse). Though I did like SuSE KDE’s colours when it worked!
But Windows also does pre caching?
It probably just didn’t mark that memory as “used” in the task manager.
I discovered this about 20yrs ago and there’s been a lot of drugs & drink since then.
I do remember I could open my shit-hot 256Mb RAM desktop with Windows XP taskmanager and it shows a whopping 128Mb free RAM. 😎
Then I’d boot into my ‘733T H4X0r’ Suse Linux 7.3 and top would show 5Mb free RAM. 😱
This caused much upset until I found out the two OS’s have (had?) fundamentally different memory utilisation philosophies.
May not be the case anymore but it was late 90s/early 00s.