There’s also the idea that free RAM is somehow a good thing. In an ideal system, the RAM would always be “full” of potentially useful data. Having a bunch of empty RAM means that it’s not being useful. That space could be used to hold plenty of regularly used files that would be instantly loaded instead of having to pull from the drive again.
I don’t know when everyone started getting concerned with RAM usage, but in a perfect system, it would hold onto all of your frequently used programs and files that it could fit from boot and then those would load instantly.
Some Linux distros even allow loading the entire OS into RAM for wild speeds.
Idle RAM is just that. It does you no favors. Now, I do understand that you don’t want to be completely out, but we act like having 80% free is a goal for some reason.
There’s also the idea that free RAM is somehow a good thing. In an ideal system, the RAM would always be “full” of potentially useful data. Having a bunch of empty RAM means that it’s not being useful. That space could be used to hold plenty of regularly used files that would be instantly loaded instead of having to pull from the drive again.
I don’t know when everyone started getting concerned with RAM usage, but in a perfect system, it would hold onto all of your frequently used programs and files that it could fit from boot and then those would load instantly.
Some Linux distros even allow loading the entire OS into RAM for wild speeds.
Idle RAM is just that. It does you no favors. Now, I do understand that you don’t want to be completely out, but we act like having 80% free is a goal for some reason.