Windows 11's 4 GB minimum is dishonest. You cannot reasonably run it on that little, it is far too bloated at this point. Even LTSC benefits from 6 GB, and that is substantially cut-down compared to retail/enterprise.

I'd say Windows 11's real minimal is 8 GB in 2026, with the recommended being 16 GB.

PS - And even at 8 GB, it hits 100% usage and pages under moderate load or e.g. Windows Update running in the background.

I changed to devuan, now it uses 75 MB ram on idle.

God I miss openstep and CDE. It needs 16MB RAM (yes MB!) and together with a lighweight firefox clone you get everything you need. Eye candy is nice to have but not at that cost.

Why is this here? Extreme clickbait for those without tech literacy

But we already know Ubuntu is the “worst” (most like modern windows, setup for media consumption, etc).

You can install Debian and it gives you all that you are familiar with from Ubuntu.

I switched to Debian a long time ago for both desktops and servers. For me personally I don’t see what value prop Ubuntu even has anymore, apart from maybe having ZFS in the kernel. Support maybe? I’ve never used it personally so I don’t know if it’s any good, but for any serious shop willing to spend money on support I’d probably go with RHEL anyway.

The article itself acknowledges that the headline is bullshit:

> The change isn't about the core operating system becoming resource-hungry. Instead, it reflects the way people use computers today—multiple browser tabs, web apps, and multitasking workflows

Basically the change reflects the fact that, at this level of analysis (how much RAM do I need in my consumer PC), the OS is irrelevant these days. If you use a web browser then that will dominate your resource requirements and there's nothing Linux can do about that.

Many commenters blows up here but you have to see this from the non-informed consumer perspective I think.

What I mean is, yes, WE know Win11 barely works with 4GB and WE know that 6gb is quite generous for a Linux machine, but they don't.

The general public isn't as informed as we think they are (which is proven by 75 million people last election).

> Canonical isn’t making 6GB memory a hard requirement for Ubuntu 26.04. It will still install on machines that fall below the minimum requirement, but users will have to deal with slower performance.

I think we have quite different definition of "minimum requirement", then.

With arch+hyprland I hit 5GiB for a zen browser instance with 15+ tabs and a kitty instance with 15+ windows across 5 tabs, with codex and vim running.

If ram is a problem there's always alternatives. The impediment is always having to rethink your workflow or adopting someone else's opinion.