The memory management of an OS is almost always entirely dependent on what it’s doing or designed to do. Linux and Windows are able to do similar things, but are rarely tasked with the same workloads.
Windows desktop (aka, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11) are designed to be more pretty and run desktops that the user will see/interact with, etc. I will say that Microsoft knows their audience and the windows prefetch stuff is quite good, all things considered…
Windows server on the other hand… Until recently, it still shipped with IE11 as the only browser. Of course as soon as you started it, the whole system would complain and tell you to go download edge…
Server is a beast unto itself.
Additionally, as an IT support person, I always prefer people have more RAM than they need, rather than less. Getting that figure just right is nigh impossible. And if you have the RAM, you should use it, right? Because otherwise, why would you have it? It becomes a waste of money.
Prefetch and memory caching is a good use of memory, and a big reason why Windows has very little memory actually “free” at any given time… I’ll note, I’m mentioning free memory, not available memory.
It’s a fascinating topic, honestly.
With all that being said, I’m not saying that Windows is actually better in any way. My entire point is that there’s merit to the different methodologies of the different operating systems. They’re built differently and that is a good thing.
My main issue with Linux is that it doesn’t reserve any CPU time for itself. Push it to 100% usage and the mouse cursor lags all over the place. I think this a Wayland thing.
I like that this is both true and false.
The memory management of an OS is almost always entirely dependent on what it’s doing or designed to do. Linux and Windows are able to do similar things, but are rarely tasked with the same workloads.
Windows desktop (aka, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11) are designed to be more pretty and run desktops that the user will see/interact with, etc. I will say that Microsoft knows their audience and the windows prefetch stuff is quite good, all things considered…
Windows server on the other hand… Until recently, it still shipped with IE11 as the only browser. Of course as soon as you started it, the whole system would complain and tell you to go download edge… Server is a beast unto itself.
Additionally, as an IT support person, I always prefer people have more RAM than they need, rather than less. Getting that figure just right is nigh impossible. And if you have the RAM, you should use it, right? Because otherwise, why would you have it? It becomes a waste of money.
Prefetch and memory caching is a good use of memory, and a big reason why Windows has very little memory actually “free” at any given time… I’ll note, I’m mentioning free memory, not available memory.
It’s a fascinating topic, honestly.
With all that being said, I’m not saying that Windows is actually better in any way. My entire point is that there’s merit to the different methodologies of the different operating systems. They’re built differently and that is a good thing.
You do not need 3GiB of ram to look pretty though. I think Windows is just badly optimized.
Great points! Yet, Linux = greased lightning, Windows = sludge. So your great points can go suck off a polar bear.
My main issue with Linux is that it doesn’t reserve any CPU time for itself. Push it to 100% usage and the mouse cursor lags all over the place. I think this a Wayland thing.
I used to have that issue on x11 but never again since switching to Wayland.