I just spent the day researching this only to discover it's an ongoing bug which is several years old.
I outline my results here: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ubuntu-19-10 -gnome-shell-memory-leak/153376 To summarize that post, simply moving windows and toggling workspaces causes gnome-shell to jump from 200mb to 1.2G of ram use in a matter of minutes (several hours if I'm not intentionally trying to open apps and move windows around). This bug is affecting me on Ubuntu 19.10 running on an Aorus Master X570 with a 3950X and 64G of memory. The machine is only a few weeks old. It's a clean install. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1856516 Title: Excessive memory usage by gnome-shell in 19.10 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1856516/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs