Private to whom? You’ve just moved the observer from your ISP to your VPN provider and whomever is upstream from them.

légal entity

The differences in memory management and allocation could explain it. Linux is far more aggressive at cache IO I think.

As others have mentioned I’d use a proper tester (aka memtest86+), it will probably take overnight.

Which memtest did you use?

I’ve used Linux as my main and only workstation for over twenty years, and I’ve never had an experience close to what OP describe, so no, I wouldn’t say it’s always been that way.

FWIW Debian isn’t a non profit. Debian is not a legal entity period. It receives funds via the Software in the Public Interests, which also holds the copyrights, but the project itself just is. It’s probably the world largest, longest running, self organized affiliation group.

Also debian testing is a fine rolling release. maybe sometimes a bit slow on security updates, but for a workstation that isn’t exposed to the internet, and using flatpaks for browser it’s mostly a non issue. That can also be mitigated by installing security updates from Sid. And secure-testing release take care of the most critical issues as well. If you avoid the couple’s weeks right before and after the freeze, it’s generally stable enough.

Yes, snap sucks.

You ever run a memtest?

It’s not an edge case, it’s my daily life.

This is a single program.

Thanks for dismissing other people’s experience that don’t match yours, you’re a real one.

This isn’t some meme, it’s a screenshot from my computer.

give me a single reason

Apple selling 16GB laptops is something anyone in the know regards as essentially criminal.

Don’t forget that Linux isn’t isn’t nearly as aggressive as Android in killing background processes, which means RAM is far more likely to stay hanging, and you probably don’t want to be swapping on the eMMC.

NLNet