That's such a funny thing to say when like 90% of personal computers are basically used for browser and office, which both should be able to run perfectly fine on 8gb.

Windows has been actively going down a ram thirsty route for some time now.

You can easily have a fast and convinent system with 8gb of ram running most Linux distros with a browser of you choice and LibreOffice.

My laptop right now is running CacheyOS with KDE with 8 tabs on librewolf (one of which is a playing 1080p video) libreoffice writer and a system monitor, all of this on a 4k screen and everything is snappy. My ram usage? 6.5gb and no swap.

Windows 11 struggles to run smoothly on 8gb, let alone running multiple programs and videos playing.

So what the hell are you talking about?

The only correct amount of ram is the amount that covers your work load. Full stop.

Incorrect, as you immediately point out in the second half of the sentence.

Yes windows could use less ideally.

The correct amount of RAM is the amount that covers your workload and the baseline overhead of supporting components, in this case, an OS.

As a general rule, windows uses significantly more RAM for baseline.

But we can’t keep pretending that 8 gigs of ram is remotely fucking acceptable for ever.

Agreed, but we can push back on them pretending that it has nothing to do with their (subjectively shitty) choices.