Problem is, Ubuntu’s track record with projects like Upstart, Unity, Mir, Snap, Netplan, Amazon integration, the Rust coreutils rewrite, etc. makes the “only cautiously and where it truly makes sense” promise seem rather hollow.

No, that would be Azure Linux

Very basically, what’s happening is that every file that is read (including the binaries and libraries that make up the services you run, etc) is loaded into memory and stays there until that memory needs to be reclaimed for something else. It’s a good thing. It means that the next time that file is needed, it can be accessed directly in RAM rather than reaching out to the filesystem.

These day’s I’d be more worried that I’d be taken to some malware infested lookalike.

Yeah, I used to type “putty download”, click “I’m feeling lucky”, and go.

It worked 100% of the time. I wouldn’t try it these days, even if I needed putty.