I found a lot of flawed measurements which ended up measuring different things. This seems like a fairly respectable measurement even for being a few years old https://itvision.altervista.org/linux-desktop-environments-system-usage.html Simple environments like xfce or mate under X11 are around 600 MB. Gnome X 1300MB Gnome Wayland 1400. Seems pretty clear that gnome is a significant factor in the increase on the other hand most machines now come with 8-16