I've moved from Zorin Core (modern Gnome) to Zorin lite (xfce which I think is supposed to be much lighter) and can't understand how Zorin lite on my system sits at 900MB RAM on idle which is pretty much the same as Core was on my laptop.
So I'm not sure if something is wrong or this is normal?
Moved to "Chat about Zorin".
On my Dell Inspiron 3542 I am running MX Linux 23.3 Kde. With both my email client and ungoogled Chromium browser open but me not actually doing anything (idle) my machine shows 1 to 3 % cpu usage. And it shows 2.3 gig of memory being used of my 8 gig memory I have. I also see a cpu temp of 50 C.
I am running Zorin OS 17.1 Lite R2.
CPU is around 15%
RAM is around 900 MB after heavy customizations like Picom and Plank.
In Zorin 17, I see some opinions that there is no significant difference in memory consumption between Core and Lite. This is probably due to the increased optimization of Core, which is not strange.
I guess I now understand why lite support has its end in sight. Core looks much better (just hate it always asking for password when waking up computer. Lite dosent which is why I prefer it as I'm the only one that uses the computer and windows key opens start menu on light, on core it opens I don't know what, wish it could be set to open start menu).
But seems for xfce light is much heavier than other xfce distros?
Wonder if light would be faster and use less resources if it used LXQt instead of Xfce?
You can change this in Zorin Appearance -> Interface -> Left Super Key -> Zorin Menu.
I think you really need to cross examine other factors and research "Performance" before jumping to conclusions:
My interest in this is there's another old laptop in the hose with just 2GB RAM (somehow windows 7 at idle uses half of that) and wondering if it will run fine or if I should go with something lighter like Lubuntu or even lighter still antiX.
Antix is very light, indeed.
With 2 gigs of RAM, I would expect any newer operating system to show signs of struggling under heavy load, while most should still operate tolerably under light usage.
What you can do is test various Distros or D.E.'s on your machine and see how they perform on it. Or if you prefer to not spend time and resources on doing all that, you can play it safe and opt for a known light distro or desktop environment from the outset.
are all examples of lightweight distros, in addition to Zorin OS Lite for the time it has remaining. I think that for a machine with 2 gigs, by the time Lite is discontinued, that machine may be on its last legs, anyway.
Antix only needs 256 Mb of RAM to run. I left it behind for 'systemd' leftover political reasons. Antix allows you to install other DE's but when you install KDE Plasma it pulls in a remnant (an isolated part of systemd), elogind, setup by a separate team from Poettinger. PCLinuxOS KDE (and MATE and xfce) has no systemd, and no elogind cluttering the system. i tried to install the xfce version of PCLinuxOS on my good lady's machine but I had issues with printing and there was something else, but I put it down to the fact that the machine is not a dual-processor, just a single AMD Athlon64 from 2006, and surprisingly Q4OS KDE which has systemd, and based on Debian Bookworm runs relatively well. By that I mean you can't have multiple apps running. This is also mainly down to the fact that the GPU is a 512 Mb AGP 8x EVGA card. At least it is not e-waste!
Currently under PCLinuxOS KDE Plasma 5.27 I have Firefox open with two tabs, Audacious running and playing, and Dolphin file manager, System Settings, Spectacle, and Synaptic Package Manager open - currently 1.51-1.54 Gb!
Oh, nearly forgot, Konsole running htop!
I don't normally have this many apps open anyway, I am not a multitasking user - I believe in K.I.S.S. = no systemd! 
I'm running on Zorin OS Pro 16.3, which uses Gnome 3.38 if I remember correctly, & Ubuntu 5.:15. This is the RAM usage from my machine, after computer just booted up, with only 1-Chrome browser window open, with computer at idle state. This is an older screenshot I took, but is still valid.
This is my computer's resource usage after being online for 246 days, with several browser windows open at once, with light internet usage.
I do respect people's decision to prevent a 14yo to 24yo computer going to e-waste. But computer's that old are not really designed for modern Linux operating systems, especially since 32-bit support has been phased out. Additionally, internet 2.0 as its known, is already too heavy for 24-year old machines, and internet 3.0 is soon dropping.
And with kernel support dropping for older machines, and modern APPS requiring multiple cores, for developing software, editing software, and games, its kind of time to buy a new computer, or buy one used to save some money, that is at least decent enough to handle modern day Linux, APPS, and games.
I've never fully maxed out my RAM, due to Linux's better then Windows RAM management. Having said that, I have come close, as I once saw my RAM usage sitting at 26GB to 28GB of RAM usage, during heavy 4K editing usage.
If you look at my 2-Stacer screenshots, you can clearly tell that I have filled up the drive more with games. I am getting close to the point where I need another hard drive lol. Having said that, I am making due with my 2-TB of total storage between 2-NVME drives, as well as 500+GB of portable SATA SSD storage via USB external.
Just can't believe how heavy stuff has become with feature creep. I mean a playstation 3 had just 256MB RAM and was a gaming powerhouse.
Any idea if waterfox is much lighter than Firefox as it's marketed as a light browser.
Linux mint Debian edition has a 32bit option but I really don't see that running well on very old machines unless the 32 bit option is significantly lighter than the 64bit option?
Anti x seems to be the lightest distro I've come across. Lubuntu in second.
In the example screenshot from @StarTreker above, you can see how having more RAM available means that programs will ask for more RAM to use. This makes perfect sense: anyone would ask for more stuff when there's more stuff to go around!
Caching resources in memory is a good thing:
Don't get me wrong, I also make decisions based on this metric. For example, I tend to use terminal tools much more often than graphical ones; CLIs consume far fewer resources (although there are other factors to consider, like ergonomics and ease of use).
But what does lightweight even mean? This seems to be the cliche word of the decade, and it means a different thing depending on who you ask.
Yes, I agree that a program that only needs 10MB of RAM is more lightweight than an equivalent program that uses two, three or ten times as much. But does it really matter when there are thousands of MB readily available, waiting to be used?
Of course, some programs are more wasteful than others, but then you should re-consider the choice in software, not hardware.
Dedicated hardware is always going to outperform general purpose computers. For example, YouTube decided to start making their own transcoding chips for better performance.
Also of interest: The Most Powerful Computers You've Never Heard Of — Veritasium
A 32-bit machine can only ever use, at most, 4GB of RAM. By definition, it's going to be "lighter" than a 64-bit machine in just about every realistic scenario, since it's going to be using less memory. But so it would a 16-bit machine, and an 8-bit machine, etc...
My point being: there's no reason in pursuing the holy grail of performance when there's no reason for it. Evaluate your needs, and choose accordingly.
My idle ram usage on zorin os 17.1 is 1.9 gb ram from my 8 gb ram
Also I noticed that some operating systems have different usage of ram for example
Windows 11 and Mac os 14
Windows has high ram usage for example if ur computer has 16 gb ram windows will take high ram usage around 6~9 gb ram but if ur computer has 8 gb ram windows will take 3~6 gb ram usage
And for Mac os
Unused ram in Mac os is a waste that is why Mac os use much more than windows and
Linux also thanks for reading😀
But had me thinking of how it's possible such an old 32 bit machine can run modern Linux (specifically Linux mint Debian edition LMDE) which comes in 32 bit.
