Why does one program on Windows and Ubuntu use different amounts of memory?

Question

C++ / C#

There is a program with source codes. On Windows, the heap profiler shows an average result of 50MB (maximum is 300). On Ubuntu top - virtual -> 1.2 GB, resident average - 200mb, maximum - 500 (from OOM Killer logs). Why is that?

Answer 1

There can't be the same program for different operating systems - even if you build them from different sources.

Answer 2

There is a suggestion that the heap manager in your Windows compiler's standard library is more advanced than the one under Ubuntu. It is even possible that this is the price of "freedom" of software.