For me windows uses 3-5gb of ram on idle just after starting up. This is pretty consistent across multiple computers for me. On the same computers (I dual-boot on both my laptop and desktop) Linux idles at about 800mb-1.2gb. This was even true on KDE which was one of the “heavier” feature-rich desktop environments. I think Gnome might have been 1.5gb ish but I haven’t used in a while. Either way, it used way less RAM than my windows installs which could noticeably impact some resource intensive programs like blender or davinci resolve
For me windows uses 3-5gb of ram on idle just after starting up. This is pretty consistent across multiple computers for me. On the same computers (I dual-boot on both my laptop and desktop) Linux idles at about 800mb-1.2gb. This was even true on KDE which was one of the “heavier” feature-rich desktop environments. I think Gnome might have been 1.5gb ish but I haven’t used in a while. Either way, it used way less RAM than my windows installs which could noticeably impact some resource intensive programs like blender or davinci resolve