saveRDS() and readRDS() Why?

From a Windows R session, I do

object.size(rawData)

31736 bytes  # from scraping a non-reproducible web address.

saveRDS(rawData, file = "rawData.rds")

Then copy to a Linux session

rawData <- readRDS(file = "rawData.rds")
rawData

[1] "rawData"

object.size(rawData)

112 bytes

rawData

[1] "rawData" # only the name and something to make up 112 bytes

Have I misunderstood the syntax?

It's an old version on Windows.  I haven't used Windows R since then.

major          3
minor          2.4
year           2016
month          03
day            16


I've tried R-3.5.0 and R-3.5.1 Linux versions.

In case it's material ...

I couldn't get the scraping to work on either of the R installations
but Windows users told me it worked for them.  So I thought I'd get
the R object and use it.  I could understand accessing the web address
could have different permissions for different OSes, but should that
affect the R objects?

TIA

--
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
   ___    Patrick Connolly
 {~._.~}                   Great minds discuss ideas
 _( Y )_                 Average minds discuss events
(:_~*~_:)                  Small minds discuss people
 (_)-(_)                              ..... Eleanor Roosevelt

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.