That makes way more sense. I remember plasma idling around 1.4 GiB back when I was running Arch with 16 GB of RAM. Although right now on my Kubuntu machine at work, I'm using 3.0 / 110 GiB just being on the desktop.
It's interesting how close they are to one another. I don't understand why there is a Dropbox column and didn't see it mentioned anywhere else. Another question I have is how much RAM the system has in total, as that seems to affect consumption.
I mainly write C. I really like Intellij Clion because it uses CMake as project files. It also makes tools like valgrind, perf and gdb available without having to go to the terminal.
You could look at KVM switches which allow you to switch input with the touch of a button, although they could be pricey.
Second idea that comes to mind is installing something like parsec on your laptop and just remoting into it from your desktop.