> On windows when you allocate it will gurantee it has the memory to fulfill the request at the time of the request. On Linux no check is made until you try to use the memory.
That's not true, you have to turn vm.overcommit_memory on in Linux for that to happen I believe. Which is off by default in most distros.
The default is to allow "sensible" overcommit whatever that means. From my experience whatever "sensible" is, really is sensible and I haven't had issue with that. You can also set it to allow all memory allocations, even "silly" ones (i.e. allocate 100GB memory on a system with 10GB RAM); or to refuse overcommiting memory.
That's not true, you have to turn vm.overcommit_memory on in Linux for that to happen I believe. Which is off by default in most distros.