Re:Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
by Roboprog on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @12:19AM
(#3074198)
Would it be a crime to send the "background" login sessions to swap?
(I suspect that might be what's happening when the wife and kids swap between 3 or 4 sessions on one of the Ubuntu machines at home -- but Linux isn't dumping actual running programs out to swap as fast as possible to make room for the 500 MB Word doc you might open, either)
Multiple user logins is a big part of it. All editions of Windows 7 above Starter let an additional user log in when the machine is locked without disrupting the locked session. It's an expected usage pattern that a family of 4 to 6 users will often be all logged in at the same time.
The windowing environment for each user takes on the order of 50 to 100 MB, plus figure 200 - 400 MB for the programs each user is likely to run, and you can get to 2 GB pretty quick.