Additional operating systems should utilize RAM more frequently by default.
Additional operating systems should utilize RAM more frequently by default.
That’s a solid concept. Storing the operating system in RAM would mean it gets completely erased each time the system is powered on or off. Understanding this highlights the main challenge with RAM as a typical data storage medium.
You're asking about what "run on RAM" means. It's a confusing term. We don't put operating systems directly onto RAM because 1) we'd need an enormous amount of memory, and a fresh Windows installation is around 20GB and keeps expanding with updates. 2) RAM loses its data when power is lost, so installing OS on RAM would require restarting every time you shut it down. Modern operating systems like Windows 7 and newer load all necessary components into RAM during startup. You can test this by turning the computer on, unplugging the hard drive, and seeing if it still functions, though you'll encounter errors when trying to access files stored on the drive.
He probably didn’t realize RAM is reset when the computer shuts down. Or perhaps he was acting out a scenario.
Ram is far more expensive than solid state storage, by about two orders of magnitude. Secondly, when you power off the system (pray it doesn't shut down improperly) it will need to save everything to a storage drive anyway and reload it all again when you turn it on, significantly lengthening the process. Third, you're basically begging to lose your data. No they don't, only live images and a few ultra small distributions do that and both will either lose all changes or save them to storage when shut down. Live images also still use their support medium for a lot of things, they only load the kernel and the bare essentials on RAM. Also, ROM does not mean storage. Windows aside, there are ways for the OS to load a big part of itself into ram at startup, but you run into the tradeoffs mentioned above.