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
I don’t see anything wrong here. Ram is supposed to be always as full as possible.
What is not needed by running programs should be full of disk pages cached. A system with lots of free ram is oversized or abnormal.
Also, today’s kernels require swap space. On disk is a must for a server, and maybe consider even zram.
Having swap will allow the kernel to organize it’s memory usage even better.
Don’t over think ram as that is a field in which you will be wrong and the kernel will be right 99%.