An Arch Linux install with i3 as the window manager will consume <300MB of RAM and be (subjectively) more responsive than Windows. On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM.
I think it's a baseline like this that leaves people wondering why Windows by default needs to consume large amounts of RAM.
My mostly stock install of Win8.1 seems to use less than 600MB at idle. I 100% agree with you that Linux can be more efficient (that screenshot was taken from a VM running on Linux, which is my primary OS), but Windows isn't that awful memory wise.
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An Arch Linux install with i3 as the window manager will consume <300MB of RAM and be (subjectively) more responsive than Windows. On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM.
I think it's a baseline like this that leaves people wondering why Windows by default needs to consume large amounts of RAM.
Are you sure about that? https://i.imgur.com/jXRrEJS.png
My mostly stock install of Win8.1 seems to use less than 600MB at idle. I 100% agree with you that Linux can be more efficient (that screenshot was taken from a VM running on Linux, which is my primary OS), but Windows isn't that awful memory wise.