PS. This is not a critique to Debian-based distros. And i'm not suggesting you to skip Ubintu for Arch either. Arch is a bit advanced and not too easy to new users, so that won't do for some people...
... just install Linux Mint instead.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Mint user: I don't care how much RAM my system uses as long as it works.
"Hey look, my old af computer works again. Sweet"
That's about how I see it. I've used other distros for niche projects (like un-bricking my OG Xbox with a 20 year old desktop, cause I fucked up the mod). But I use Mint for my daily computer, cause I'm not much of a software tinkerer... and my wife can use it without issues as well. Fuck, I do love Linux for all the hardware it's helped me save, regardless of distro
I dunno. There are some of us who run Mint not because we don't know what we're doing but because we do* and we don't want to have to deal with any more nonsense than we absolutely have to.
From that small cohort, there are those of us who'll frown when all we have open is a few browser tabs and the system's using 8GB of RAM, twice the "recommended" spec. On startup with nothing running it's over 1GB.
It's hard not to see it as wasteful when you're old enough to remember perfectly good machines running on single-digit megabytes. **
* Or at least, think we do.
** Yes, things are much more complex these days. But are they really a thousand times more complex?
Consider trying void. If you can live without system d, it's quite comfy though still low on ram usage. Also, the package repos ship closer-to-latest software. Mostly you'll get all the way there on release day with just a few relatively niche things here or there that you'll have to wait a bit for; ime, go's compiler is a common example; after a very annoying, though admittedly forgotten by me, bug was introduced a couple of years ago we usually only get new versions after the first bug fix has come out. Another is skim, the fzf alternative but that's technically not seen a new version since the auto-selecting-empty-lines bug was fixed.
The "free (physical) RAM is wasted RAM" adage rules.
here you go
I was pointing out that swap space, sometimes known as virtual RAM, requires more careful management because of bandwidth and write cycle limitations (for example, it does not make sense to cache files there if they exist on the same physical medium) so full use of space on it is a lower priority.
A safe bet is the best bet.