I have to think the average software developer stopped using a system with as little as 4GB RAM years ago, so running multiple RAM hungry apps at the same time with a 4GB constraint just doesn't get much developer testing, unless by those producing distros specifically made to fit low RAM and/or older hardware, e.g. AntiX.
On openSUSE 15.1 running KDE3, I just closed Firefox. Disk cache dropped by 1%. App data dropped by 23%, so total RAM dropped by 24%. I have 16GB RAM, so that's just a little less than 4GB of RAM freed. Closing Chromium, which had fewer open tabs, freed 7%, around 1.1GB. I have to think FF + Occular + LO + Steam are likely to fit poorly in 4GB, so are likely to need to utilize swap.
Mint might be more efficient that Kubuntu's KDE5 Plasma. Mint uses a completely different DE than Kubuntu, while Mint is built on Ubuntu, which in turn is built on Debian. In essence, changing to Mint essentially amounts to a change from Plasma to Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE.
On Debian or Ubuntu I use
TDE, which is a KDE3 fork that I find very efficient with as little as 2GB RAM.