I'm responding to the assertion: "The OS should use all available RAM it practically can for things like cache. Not the applications." Applied absolutely, it r

I'm responding to the assertion: "The OS should use all available RAM it practically can for things like cache. Not the applications." Applied absolutely, it results in deeply sub-optimal behavior in a large number of cases. Another case could be image decode caching via glide for scrolling lists, or skia output tile caching in a browser, or texture caching in a game engine, or reference frame caching in a video decoder, or glyph caching in a word processor, or block caching in a constructive solid modeller, or result caching in a spreadsheet, or composition caching in a presentation tool, etc. etc. etc. Caching is an enormously effective tool for applications and operating systems. If an operating system removed it as a tool for applications, it wouldn't likely be a competitive operating system. Should applications abusively and single-mindedly monopolize memory usage? In some cases, maybe. In general, I think we'd tend to be on the same side of things. I like to see well-behaved applications (that make conservative and efficient use of system resources) and robustly managed operating systems (that don't let apps walk all over them).