As someone who was forced to start using Windows again after ten years after ten years of exclusively running Linux: Why is it like this? Everything is so crappy and slow!
XP was snappy at first, but then I used to install a couple of programs and things started to suck big time. It was always the registry. At the time, a lot of people I knew, used to just format Windows on a regular basis, also because the spyware and malware were so prevalent.
I’m dual booting on my laptop cuz I need windows for something, but 8gb ram is too much on Linux and the same amount of ram is too little on windows, Like I have 170 processes and 6gb ram usage at idle with my apps running in background, very poor memory management.
Partially because Defender does a lot of unnecessary work. Partially because Explorer now has Chromium under the hood of many elements.
Also Copilot. Not even joking. Having so many copilot buttons in apps is not an issue. The issue is to actually try using it. Even a light conversion crashes both the desktop an Android clients too often. At this point I would rather have those resources consumed by actual AI running locally than on a crappy frontend. Pathetic.
These are just NPUs. They can run AI models, but you are not allowed to run actual Copilot as it is a cloud-based product. You need to research and set up AI models yourself if you want to put that to use.
I also don’t expect that [Chromium + idiotic webdevs] formula will not work on those PCs, so Copilot+ PCs will not save you from Copilot crashes.
Linux aint perfect either. Look at the memory usage of most modern “fully featured” distros. They’re using damn near as much at idle as windows is. Same thing going back 10 years in time.
The key is with windows you get one windows, and maybe some tweaks. With linux you could go with a hyper minimal DE with not much in the way of shiny features and go a whole lot further.
I’ve never seen a distro take more than 2gb RAM ootb (ubuntu gnome and kde are probably the “heavy” contenders), excluding precached files. In either case, Windows or Linux, you lose big time the moment you launch a web browser.
The fresh install of Manjaro KDE on my laptop is using 2.6gb on a fresh boot right out of the box.
I forget what distro it was (maybe neon?) that was using like 3.X gigs of ram on a fresh install. That was the point that I realized this wasn’t the Linux of old.
Huh TIL, had a look through my system and it sits at about ~5GB not including disk cache. Been on Fedora KDE since 39 and have put it through its paces so I’m pretty happy with that
I would’ve reformatted windows twice in that time because of bloat accumulation, and like you said there’s always room for improvement with hyper minimalist packages.
Not prefect, but c’mon. You can run Linux+GUI in a potato, but even KDE Plasma is not nearly close to Windows in RAM/CPU usage (excepting misconfigurations of baloo).
I switched to KDE Neon lately and holy fuck does it chug down my battery in a few hours time (though most of the consumption is from Firefox so can’t blame it completely on the distro)
It’s nearly the same for me, except it’s been nine years, and I’ve been using both Linux and Mac. It’s not bad enough to look for a new job, but oh man, I hate it so much.
As someone who was forced to start using Windows again after ten years after ten years of exclusively running Linux: Why is it like this? Everything is so crappy and slow!
Its logging half your shit, and trying to advertise to you anywhere it can! Get used to it…
It’s always been like this. Those 10 years ruined you as a Windows user.
I have recently booted into dad’s decade(s?) old xp pc and was baffled by how snappy that thing was…
XP was snappy at first, but then I used to install a couple of programs and things started to suck big time. It was always the registry. At the time, a lot of people I knew, used to just format Windows on a regular basis, also because the spyware and malware were so prevalent.
I’m dual booting on my laptop cuz I need windows for something, but 8gb ram is too much on Linux and the same amount of ram is too little on windows, Like I have 170 processes and 6gb ram usage at idle with my apps running in background, very poor memory management.
Partially because Defender does a lot of unnecessary work. Partially because Explorer now has Chromium under the hood of many elements.
Also Copilot. Not even joking. Having so many copilot buttons in apps is not an issue. The issue is to actually try using it. Even a light conversion crashes both the desktop an Android clients too often. At this point I would rather have those resources consumed by actual AI running locally than on a crappy frontend. Pathetic.
Don’t they have the whole “copilot+ ready pc” branding thing now for computers with npus? is none of it actually local yet?
These are just NPUs. They can run AI models, but you are not allowed to run actual Copilot as it is a cloud-based product. You need to research and set up AI models yourself if you want to put that to use.
I also don’t expect that [Chromium + idiotic webdevs] formula will not work on those PCs, so Copilot+ PCs will not save you from Copilot crashes.
Linux aint perfect either. Look at the memory usage of most modern “fully featured” distros. They’re using damn near as much at idle as windows is. Same thing going back 10 years in time.
The key is with windows you get one windows, and maybe some tweaks. With linux you could go with a hyper minimal DE with not much in the way of shiny features and go a whole lot further.
I’ve never seen a distro take more than 2gb RAM ootb (ubuntu gnome and kde are probably the “heavy” contenders), excluding precached files. In either case, Windows or Linux, you lose big time the moment you launch a web browser.
The fresh install of Manjaro KDE on my laptop is using 2.6gb on a fresh boot right out of the box.
I forget what distro it was (maybe neon?) that was using like 3.X gigs of ram on a fresh install. That was the point that I realized this wasn’t the Linux of old.
For shits and giggles I just tested out Ubuntu 25.04 and it’s only 1.3 gigs with it’s stock Ubuntuified de.
For as much shit as Ubuntu gets it’s really not that bad compared to some of the others.
It probably was Neon. I switched recently and (for me) it’s more resource hungry than Kubuntu, even.
Linux also uses a lot of ram for disk caching, it’s flagged as a form of available memory so there’s no performance overheard for this.
Disk caching is almost never included in the ram usage numbers. Or if it is it’s specified as caching, but still not factored into the number.
Huh TIL, had a look through my system and it sits at about ~5GB not including disk cache. Been on Fedora KDE since 39 and have put it through its paces so I’m pretty happy with that
I would’ve reformatted windows twice in that time because of bloat accumulation, and like you said there’s always room for improvement with hyper minimalist packages.
God I love Linux.
Not prefect, but c’mon. You can run Linux+GUI in a potato, but even KDE Plasma is not nearly close to Windows in RAM/CPU usage (excepting misconfigurations of baloo).
I switched to KDE Neon lately and holy fuck does it chug down my battery in a few hours time (though most of the consumption is from Firefox so can’t blame it completely on the distro)
It’s nearly the same for me, except it’s been nine years, and I’ve been using both Linux and Mac. It’s not bad enough to look for a new job, but oh man, I hate it so much.
Why use a mac when you can emulate it in linux? (heck, even with GPU passthrough!)
My company gave it to me for work, and I used it, just as I do now with the Windows machine.