Understanding memory usage on Linux | Virtual Threads

An interesting read about why ps is always inaccurate. I love the classoc ps_mem.py script.

It also shows that it pays to stick with one desktop’s software as much as possible. If you run KDE for your desktop, but mostly use Gnome applications, then you are paying a large price for a lot of redundant (but different) shared libraries. By sticking to just KDE or just Gnome apps as much as possible, you reduce your overall memory usage due to the reduced marginal memory cost of running new KDE or Gnome applications, which allows Linux to use more memory for other interesting things (like the file cache, which speeds up file accesses immensely).