Zorin is the only OS installed on the computer, no dual boot and I used the default guided install method of the installer. I chose to set it up with LVM and LUKS encryption. I don't have much intalled on it besides what it came with; Steam and Lutris but have not installed any games yet. The other thing I added were language packs and a bunch of extensions on firefox.
The issue is that when I have nothing open the computer uses way too much RAM but I have no clue why. Is the sistem monitor wrong or is Zorin actually using this much? It wouldn't be difficult for me to reinstall it because I have everything backed up and I don't have to worry about boot issues with windows.
It would be helpful if you showed us the Processes tab and what it says there, while sorting the RAM usage from highest to lowest, so that processes that take up the most RAM are shown on the very top.
I notice that you mentioned firefox and adding some extensions. I seem to recall recently that someone had a similar issue (though I can't find the thread right now) and I believe their issue stemmed from around firefox. But as @MidnightRose said above, the individual processes tab to show ram usage would be good.
If it does seem to be a firefox thing, I could recommend an uninstall and reinstall of it, or try disabling some of the extensions you've added to see if that causes the issue.
If I have booted my system, by default I think my system uses about 1.5gb, and I've got 32gb installed. using 66% of their 16gb seems a good bit high if nothing is being used.
Its technically normal with gnome. Just running the OS, its not unheard of to use 5.4GB of RAM on gnome. If you have a browser window or 2 open, its not uncommon to see an additional 1GB to 3GB added to that.
Also, if you never shutoff your computer or restart it, its not uncommon to see the RAM usage, go up even higher still, as all sorts of media gets cashed into RAM.
The more RAM you have, the more RAM gets used. I have 32GB of RAM, and I've seen my RAM usage go up to 21GB to 28GB a couple of times, although usually hangs out around 15GB or less.
This is the reason why some people, those who work in heavy production, require 64GB to 128GB of RAM. Most of the time however, 32GB of RAM suits me just fine.
And lets be honest, 16GB of RAM that you have, is usually considered more then enough for light gaming, light photo editing, light video editing, and general computer usage.
Having said that, if you'd like to try something new, why not switch out your OS, to Zorin OS Lite? You know how much Zorin OS Lite usually uses out of the box? 1GB of RAM just running the OS.
16, 32... meanwhile I'm here with my 10y old laptop and 4GB of RAM, happy I can still use it
I have other better devices but I'm glad I extended this one's life by installing Linux on it. Windows ruined it for me way back in 2022, I couldn't boot it at all. Installed Ubuntu and noticed the hardware itself was perfectly okay. Switched later to Zorin when I discovered it
Hi Midnight Rose, glad you are enjoying Zorin OS. With 4GB of RAM, I would usually recommend Zorin OS Lite, because Gnome uses up too much RAM, but Lite is perfect. But according to your profile, it looks like you are running Core.
I am curious that Core is able to run on your system with Gnome. Anyways, I am happy to hear that you are loving Zorin OS, and were glad to have you here as well.
I did try out Lite when I was in my phase of going through different distros, but I discovered I much prefer Gnome to XFCE
And yes it works well, the biggest hiccup is the lower speed, but that's to be expected since this laptop is very old and only has an HDD. I'm very happy to be in this community, I hope it grows once Zorin Grid is (eventually) finished and Win10 runs out of support
