TOO much Ram used in live user interface (XFCE, KDE)

Hey there! i was planning to install manjaro and was stuck between the kde and the xfce De’s.

So… i flashed their iso imgs using etcher onto a flash drive and booted it up on my lappy.
i ran htop as soon as the os booted up (no other software open) and i was super surprised to see that
~1gb of Ram was used up out of the 8 gigs I’ve got (XFCE)
i found this quite high as a few months ago, i had tried mint xfce and it used around 650 mb of Ram after startup.
i later booted the KDE version:
~1.6 gb used out of 8.
this really startled me, as i had just recently seen a manjaro kde install video. the youtuber had gotten around 700mb of Ram used out of a fresh boot. (Almost an entire gig more was used in my live boot!)

Am I doing something wrong?
Is this high an amount of Ram usage normal?

Hi,

You can’t compare RAM usage between an installed system and a live system. The live system will always use more as the whole thing is running from RAM.

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Please read:

https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

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Hi @InfnteLights, and welcome!

Always remember: RAM not used, is RAM wasted.

Also keep in mind, that ISO images have to cater4 for many, many more people than an installation. There are much more modules loaded for potential use.

So yes, I’d say that is normal, even though I’ve never looked from a live ISO environment.

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You may want to try the minimal images instead. They would have less number of background processes, and may consume less memory.

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Thank you guys for the quick replies and also for welcoming me. As someone said, i will try installing the kde v of manjaro onto my hdd and see if the amount of Ram used drops. I don’t have any data to lose, so might as well.
PS- i did try the minimal images for both KDE and XFCE only.

tried htop after installing kde manjaro.
980 mb used out of 8 GB.
i can totally live with that and I’m quite glad that the Ram usage ain’t so high anymore.

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