This is from a fresh boot of the system, except sshd I have not started anything else. ram consumption used to be just 126-200 mb now it has jumped so significantly that I am concerned I might have unnecessarily bloated my system:
I intend to use the system as a local server with an optional fully featured WM(Hyprland which is installed, but this screenshot was taken before it was loaded) for occasional use.
Ram conservation is a top priority and I would like to know if such a big jump in usage is normal or are there is something wrong with my system config
Time for the classic https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Tldr it's cache, its a GOOD thing and you WANT it to happen. The memory is available if applications need it
That's not true, since it's reserved memory.
Some times. This is actually where we run into one of the issues with open source software, competing standards. Some tools will call your swap or cache "reserved" regardless if it's actually being used or not. They're not wrong, it is reserved, but it's reserved for usage in emergency situations rather than being reserved in the way we look at the rest of memory