Yeh makes sence because there were some websites I couldn't access with my old ipod ,I can't remember the message that came up ,something like does not support
But it was great for youtube
My old smart phone is the same way. It's only 10 years old now but I can't access most of the web on it because the browsers on it are no longer getting updates (older version of Android). I could probably make it work if I cared but I'd have to install a custom ROM probably. I just decided not to bother with it because I only use it to read while I'm on the toilet and most of the stuff I read on it is pure text, pdf files and/or old HTML websites.
ok thanks for your replies. It looks like I may have to do some more research. But I was under the impression that linux distros still generally use far less RAM than windows, hence people are able to keep using older pcs by switching to Linux, when they can no longer run windows, due to windows continually requiring more resources. But I will do some more up to date research.
Not that this pc is even old, just that it cant handle many youtube browsers. Honestly Ubuntu used to be able an incredible amount of open tabs and I think it only ever froze or crashed once in several years of using it.
Loads more people have been switching to Linux recently due to the enforced take up of AI capabilities on win 11 being a total disaster. Fortunately I managed to set up my machine before all the workarounds preventing using a local account, and avoiding an enforced microsoft account sign in for set up were still possible.
Modern Windows is RAM hungry but so is Linux. There has been a lot of horrible stuff happening in the big Linux distros over the last 10 years or so. The short version is it's getting as bad as Windows these days. You can run the linux kernel and build your own userspace from source. But most of the big distros are just as hungry for resources as Windows is.
RAM is not really a good way to measure how 'bloated' an OS is. Linux will take more RAM if there is more RAM available. A system with say 8GB of RAM might want 2GB at idle but the same distro/OS on a machine with 16GB of RAM will want to take 4-8GB of RAM. This is because the kernel will cache things into RAM if there are resources available. If you run a file system like ZFS or btrfs it will take all the RAM it can because those newer file systems do a lot of magic the old ones like NTFS and ext4 don't.
Then there is the issue of the web browsers. Which will act the same no matter what platform you're using. Each tab is its own container now and will take up to 2-3GB of RAM each if the website you're viewing is heavy with stuff like javascripts and 3rd party scripts running in the background.
For example; On my laptop when I boot to my desktop it takes about 500MB of RAM on a system with 32GB of total RAM. The moment I open Firefox it will jump up to 2GB of RAM consumed even if it's only on a blank webpage. If I open more tabs it'll start creeping up to 3, 4, 5GB etc. The web browsers are by far the most RAM hungry things on that system. If you use something like Steam or Discord those are just web browsers so they want their 1-3GB cut of the total RAM.
Windows 11 pissed a lot of people off and more people are moving to Linux. But they're moving over because of things like the TPM requirement in 11. It's true you can keep things more under control even with these modern distros running all the bad stuff in the background at all times. But it is nothing like Linux was before. Before 10 years ago the average Linux distro was happy to run within 1GB of RAM or so with a browser and everything loaded up. Now they've gotten to resource hungry that most of them can't run a basic desktop environment without several GB of RAM. The situation is getting a little worse with each passing year. There have been a lot of changes in the Linux distros lately and most of them are just as bad as what people fleeing from Windows are trying to escape.
You can't avoid what's happening by switching OSs I'm afraid. You can still run a slim system with a linux kernel (or one of the alternative UNIX systems) but if you want 'modern' things like steam, discord, a web browser that can access the majority of modern websites and compatibility with your old Windows software through virtual machines and wine you're going to be using just as many resources at the end of the day.
The main advantage for Linux at the moment despite all the bad stuff happening is the fact that it now supports more legacy Windows software than new versions of Windows. But it isn't perfect by any means and a lot of old stuff still doesn't work correctly. A lot of the stuff that does work still requires spending many hours messing around with config files and seeking out random .dll's to make the old Win32 stuff work through wine.
The best solution is having multiple computers running different OSs depending on your needs. The PC I use for gaming is still on my own customized version of Windows 7 and it's air-gapped most of the time. I can still connect it to the net for multiplayer if I want and I don't worry about it getting hacked simply because it's on an older version of Windows. But I also don't let it talk to the internet all of the time. Linux has a similar problem where if you don't set up your firewall rules correctly you'll constantly have bots attempting to crack the root password. They come so hard and fast they can fill up a 1TB drive with failed log-in attempts in the log files in about 12 hours.
A good rule is to have a computer dedicated to your tasks. I don't log-in to my banking website on my Windows machines. I have a laptop I've dedicated to that sort of stuff. My gaming PC doesn't do anything but run games. The Linux machine I have for work is mostly dedicated to what I do for work. Sometimes I play games on it but getting them running on it is a big pain in the ass compared to running them on the Windows 7 PC. My home server is on a more exotic OS/kernel because it's exposed to the internet and bots give up pretty quickly when they attempt to crack into it. I used to run Linux on it but it was so much trouble to keep people out that I switched it to one of the BSDs.
If you run more mainstream stuff then modern Linux might be better for you than Windows. However, if you're looking to switch because Windows 11 right now a better option for you might be sticking to Windows 10 LTSC which gets updated until 2032. Or Windows 7 which is still fine provided it's behind a good firewall running on another system. Windows 7 has better backwards compatability with older games/software than Windows 10/11 do. Proton/wine isn't a magic solution. I've got tons of games that will probably never be able to run through it. But they work just fine on Windows 7. Until a few years ago I was still running a Windows XP machine connected to the internet and it was no problem at all. But I had it behind a good firewall. I only switched away from running it because I retired that PC and got a new one which I installed Windows 7 on.
Anyway, my point is RAM consumed isn't a good yardstick. Modern kernels will take more RAM if you have more RAM. Modern browsers will always take a ton of RAM. Programmers are very lazy these days and no one optimizes anything anymore. They're all using the "RAM is cheap" excuse to churn out bad software fast.
