Indeed. They can’t know what other applications you need to run. So they more frugal the OS and application, the more available for other software apps.

It’s true unused it wasted but unfortunately what it’s used for is decided by corporate flavor of the month so garbage one drive, teams and Gemini builds eat all the ram that would be better used by other applications people actually like

I was quite surprised that this phrase, which papers over nuances in how operating systems classify and manage memory, was posted by someone who studied CS.

Please educate yourself how this is false https://www.linuxatemyram.com/