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Does Linux use less RAM?
(www.youtube.com)
tl;dw: yes
🤯
I thought it was tl;dw for watch.
It is, but only earlier in the night when my mind still grammars.
Short answer: yes, a bit, but it's unlikely to make the difference if you already need a graphical environment to run games.
maybe, this video tested with 8GB and there was a difference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJEo6Kb6Rhg
but idk how trustworthy that channel is
similarly they did a test with 4GB of VRAM and some games did better on Linux than on Windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Y9MI_g-0U
especially in 1% lows
Yeah it's enough to make an appreciable difference in the right circumstances, but it's not going to miraculously take a rig from struggling to run a certain game to working smoothly.
Its actually made quite the diffrence because windows 11 uses 18GB of Ram to run BG3, where Linux Mint was able to do the same with only 12GB.
If you only have 16GB of RAM, this avoids having to upgrade your RAM.
Just watched the vjdeo. It is absolute garbage. Their systems both had 32 GB of RAM and neither got anywhere near that. No mention of how they measured it so it is quite possible that they were counting file descriptors on Windows but not on Linux or vice versa.
Sure, Windows was using almost twice as much RAM as Linux. But as long as you have the RAM, who cares? The real struggle begins when you need as much as possible but they didn't show that at all. But they only got up to 17 GB on Windows and 11 GB on Linux. With 32 GB available on both.
I'd love Gamer's Nexus to do a similar video with actually robust and comparable testing methodology.
It's LTT. YouTube's Sharper Image catalog. No one takes them seriously.
as long as you have the RAM, who cares?
It's 2026 and NOBODY HAS THE RAM
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. So long as it's properly managed.
But they only got up to 17 GB on Windows and 11 GB on Linux. With 32 GB available on both.
In other words, if the systems had 16GB instead, it might've made a huge difference. Too bad they didn't pull a stick from each system and check again.
Yes I was waiting for 16 and then 8 GB comparisons. Comparing RAM usage without needing 100 % of it is useless, because as others have said, unused RAM is wasted RAM.
I didn't understand why they tested it with 16gb ram instead. Like when the video ended I thought my video stuck but nope they just stopped with no proper details nothing. Is this LTT now?
We already know, sure. That video is for the ones that don't. Which are the vast majority of Windows users out there.
I imagine you can also have much more choice with how to spend your RAM, such as using LXQt
Or no desktop environment at all. Depending on your needs, you can get GUI base usage down to under 100MB. Usually you'll sit much higher than that though, to support many of the features you need like audio.
Is it possible to run steam like that?
That's what the Steam Deck and Steam Machine (and probably Steam Frame) do. They have a lightweight Wayland compositor called gamescope to run the Steam UI and games on.
Geez, tell me about it. My plasmashell starts out nice and dainty, under half a gigabyte. I check in on it two or three days later, it doubles! Can get well north of 3 gigs. I changed my animated wallpaper to a static one, but it still climbs (albeit maybe a bit slower).
The deeper I get into Linux, the more I suspect I need to understand what I'm actually doing, and not just let a distro guide my hands.
Note, that depending on how you measure it that additional RAM might still be available for other apps, if needed.
Well, it's the resource manager telling me that plasmashell is bloating. I'm slowly saying goodbye to desktop widgets, but so far it hasn't been the prime suspects.
I'm also pretty sure that that RAM has been eaten, cuz I do get heavy page file usage as well, but thanks for the input!
Yes, you could get the base memory usage much lower than in the video.
I'm typing this on a minimal installation, and the ram usage is exactly at 1.4Gb. There's only brave + a lousy terminal running on the background. (Browser ram usage should be around the 1.2Gb mark btw.)
This video reminded me of the Expedition 33 issue. How to make it run good on steam deck/machine?
There are simple mods on Nexusmods to disable or dial down graphical effects. Can't remember what the one is called that I used, but it had a profile explicitly for the Steam Deck and it helped a lot.
This is the case for most UE5 games. They all have mods to tweak the graphics up or down beyond what the developers let you control. No idea why they don't use those settings.
That helps, but it still feels unnecessarily choppy even with high framerates. Could be a quirk in UE games running via Proton, don’t have any other UE5 games to test though
Linus can take his tips and stick them up his ass. So sick of this dude pretending to be an expert.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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