> 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.

Not okay as soon as you throw on the first security tool, lol.

I work in an enterprise environment with Win 11 where 16 GB is capped out instantly as soon as you open the first browser tab thanks to the background security scans and patch updates. This is even with compressed memory paging being turned on.

Win11 IOT runs great on 4gb if that matters :) I have a few machines in the field running it and my java app, still over a gig free usually.

So, you mean when RAM is 2 GiB with 25.10 the installer started up but didn't with 24.04? What about being able to install and then boot the installed Ubuntu?

Zswap is a no brainer. I have to wonder why the hesitancy.

QEMM386 for DOS did not have a memory compression feature. Only one of the later versions for Windows 3.1 did.

A lot of it is optimizing applications for higher-memory devices. RAM is completely worthless if it's not used, so ideally you should be running your software with close to maximum RAM usage for your device. Of course, the software developer doesn't necessarily know what device you will be using, or how much other software will be running, so they aim for averages.

For example, Java applications will claim much more memory than they need for the heap. Most of that memory will be unused, but it's necessary to have a faster running application. If you've ever run a Java app at consistently 90% heap usage, you know it grinds to an absolute halt with constant collection.

The same is true for caching techniques. Reading from storage is slow, so it often makes sense to put stuff in RAM even if you're not using it very often.

I also believe that this memory usage might be decreased significantly, but I don't know how much (and how much is worth it). Some RAM usage might be useful, such as caching or for things related with graphics. Some is a cumulative bloat in applications caused by not caring much or duplication of used libraries.

But I remember in 2016 Fedora Gnome consumed about 1.6GB of RAM on my PC with 2GB of RAM a decade ago. Considering that after a decade the standard Ubuntu Gnome consumes only 400MB more RAM and also that my new laptop has 16GB of RAM (the system might use more RAM when more RAM is installed), I think the increase is not that bad for a decade. I thought it would be much worse.

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.