A lot (most) of it depends on the desktop environment you use. If you look for idle RAM usage compared by desktop environment you will see how drastic it is.
It’s not that linear. Some background services will cache more things in RAM if memory usage is low and release it if total usage goes above a threshold, for example.
It doesn’t. If you’re doing anything in a web browser you’re going to need that much RAM for a reasonable experience no matter what DE you’re using. Ubuntu are just trying to set more realistic expectations.
How will this affect Linux Mint, and should I make my move to Linux Mint: Debian Edition?
A lot (most) of it depends on the desktop environment you use. If you look for idle RAM usage compared by desktop environment you will see how drastic it is.
It’s not that linear. Some background services will cache more things in RAM if memory usage is low and release it if total usage goes above a threshold, for example.
It doesn’t. If you’re doing anything in a web browser you’re going to need that much RAM for a reasonable experience no matter what DE you’re using. Ubuntu are just trying to set more realistic expectations.