Other IceWM and Ratpoison using too much ram

In Devuan and Slackware the amount of ram used with these window managers, is half than used in FreeBSD. What gives?
 
Nothing gives.
I doubt you're comparing like for like. In fact I know you aren't because you just can't.
So, are you running out of RAM? Buy more RAM or use a lighter window manager? There are lots of options.
 
Ratpoison is lightweight.

macondo is also knowledgeable about FreeBSD and windowmanagers.

The claim that those WM's are using more RAM than in those OS's is kind of odd. Where those installed from packages or ports with light options?
 
Comparison without empirical data is opinion. It works for media, but it is not good enough for technical Forums.
Share yours. I bet others could do so, thus we may reach to a conclusion.
I'm a i3 user, and I don't have access to Linux Desktop. But here's my minimum/idle RAM usage (i3wm):

262 MB: CLI.
+72 MB: xorg, i3, i3lock, i3status, dmenu
334 MB: GUI.
#uname: 12.1/AMD64
 
IceWM is certainly not the actual reason for high ram usage:
Code:
last pid:  3603;  load averages:  0.21,  0.23,  0.24    up 0+01:57:02  11:43:10
81 processes:  1 running, 80 sleeping
CPU:  1.1% user,  0.0% nice,  0.3% system,  0.0% interrupt, 98.6% idle
Mem: 804M Active, 700M Inact, 82M Laundry, 5648M Wired, 101M Buf, 592M Free
ARC: 3741M Total, 1759M MFU, 1606M MRU, 280K Anon, 113M Header, 263M Other
     2977M Compressed, 11G Uncompressed, 3.86:1 Ratio
Swap: 20G Total, 20G Free

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
 1508 pmc          23  22    0  2704M   424M select   2   6:51   4.47% firefox
 1331 pmc           4 -51   r1    19M  4532K sigwai   1   0:17   0.25% jackd
 1506 pmc          55  20    0  3108M   700M select   2   4:11   0.15% firefox
 3601 admin         1  20    0    13M  3836K CPU1     1   0:00   0.09% top
 1426 root          7  20    0   255M   157M select   2   0:53   0.06% Xorg
 1452 pmc           1  20    0    32M    16M select   2   0:05   0.04% icewm

I might suppose You're comparing the over-all ram usage of Your desktop with similar linux desktop. But that is a difficult undertaking because dozens of factors influence that. Also, the memory management itself may be different, so interpreting the visible metrics is again not a simple task.
So, if You would like to tell us the actual metrics You're looking at, then we might get a clue on what is going on.
 
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i3WM on FreeBSD and Arch GNU/Linux.

i3wm62-10.11.2020.png
 
Ah ok, that's what I thought because my experience with FreeBSD and fluxbox was I think around 400mb or so at idle. I never got that high unless I was building ports. Even with chromium open, the most I ever got was around 2gb. I never ran with more than one or 2 tabs though. Not a big tab user. I think max tabs I have every had open was 4, on any platform.
 
Ah ok, that's what I thought because my experience with FreeBSD and fluxbox was I think around 400mb or so at idle. I never got that high unless I was building ports. Even with chromium open, the most I ever got was around 2gb. I never ran with more than one or 2 tabs though. Not a big tab user. I think max tabs I have every had open was 4, on any platform.
Sometimes I'm running Firefox with 2 profiles on same machine. As for chromium, never used it, since it's "calling" home.
 
I don't care about the calling home. I am never signed into an account when I surf. I know tracking is still possible but I am not living under a rock while on the Internet. I could go all out and only surf though a VPN and Tor or I2P but that is not a path I wish to take because it. is a giant pain in the rear.

For whatever reason I have never used many tabs.
 
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Are 'Inact' 'Laundry' and 'Wired' an important part of RAM usage or does it mainly revolve around the 'active' statistic?
I think my 'active' RAM usage is not too bad:
pekwm_screenshot-20221103T154346-1920x1080.png


But the RAM usage I see in neofetch is rather high, around 720 MB.
Is that normal with PeKWM?
 
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