Why do XFCE/GNOME/KDE/... keep RAM idle?

[Clarity]

I saw a recent report on idle RAM use of Desktop Environments (DE).

Screenshot 2024-04-20 14.28.53.png (26.36 KiB) Viewed 291 times

Got me to consider an age-old discussion that goes back to 1980s with PCs particularly. It has happened FREQUENTLY in this forum in past years. Sometimes or often (depending on who you are) much accurate or inaccurate info is shared along with much emotion sometimes associated.

Questions

• Is 'IDLE RAM" a meaningful thing?

• Is it merely a launch point for what a user might choose?

• When arguments or discussions erupt of one DE vs another, is it more about the esthetics or about functionality or about options within (that many incorrectly call ''bloat")?

• Is the overall objective is the same?

I am guilty of posting idle consumption in the past, so now that I think about it, in this day an age of RAM abundance in today's PCs, I am now even questioning my own prior views of whether that is even an important measurement any more.

The report, above, shows that each DE is not very much different from each other. If this is true why have we conditioned ourselves to be as judge-mental as we are?

[wizard]

in this day an age of RAM abundance in today's PCs

A mistake to equate our own good fortune and abundance to the rest of the world's users. There are still millions of low power computers out there and even the latest versions of Puppy can run adequately on a 15 year old system. That is made possible by the package of efficient programs and framework provided by our Developers. In a system with only 1-2gb of ram, idle ram counts a lot.

Thanks
wizard

[Clarity]

I probably should have qualified this to 64bit PCs as RAM was standardized in 2006 as well as UNIX/Linux use of SWAP on the system drive.

I am referencing the plethora of DEs used across the forum and the Linux spectrum which distributes them. This is not addressing the WMs which are a subset of some DEs.

I am also asking this knowing that several of the forum developers make recommendations for RAM size with their presents to forum users. In those cases there is adequate ceiling for expected OOTB use.

[mikewalsh]

@Clarity :-

Um.....okay. You've lost me. Do me a favour, would you?

When you say:-

...RAM was standardized in 2006...

....what do you mean by "standardized" in this context? I'm not much when it comes to software (and Linux in general), but hardware has always been one of my main interests. I'm sure I don't remember anything major happening with RAM around that time (unless you're referring to the move from DDR1 to DDR2, which happened around then, I believe)..?

Mike.

[Clarity]

Yes. 2006 is when all manufacturers were instructed (rather mandated) to release x86-64 PCs with a 'standard' minimum of 1GB. All manufacturers adhered to such although some Ma & PA PC shops at that time did not; to reduce user costs along with their 32bit sales.