KDE 3.3.2 & memory usage

Snowlock · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 38

According to the infoCenter my memory usage is as follows:

Out of 512 MB RAM
----------------------

75% is used for 'disk buffering'

20% is used to 'cache'

5% is free

Out of 768 MB of SWAP
---------------------------

99% of SWAP is free

WHAT IS THE DEAL??? absolutely nothing is running, no applications... only 5 services are in the 'running' state, and all eye-candy is turned off. I have no theme, no background, the widget style is set to win 9x for extra performance, but still my memory is being used FOR SOMETHING.

Any ideas?

Mirrorball · Apprentice Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 235 Location: Brazil

The Linux kernel uses as much memory as possible as disk cache to speed up performance.

reversi · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 3

Snowlock · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 38

I am new to Linux, so I'm glad you guys have cleared this up... so regardless of which X windows I use, the amount of free memory is primarily going to be the same, because if nothing is really working in the background, most of the memory will be allocated to buffering the disk and data so as to enhance writes / reads?

But doesn't this actually slow-down the initial start-up of an application? I mean if my system has 5% free memory and I load UT2004, obviously it will need more memory to run, so the system will have to suspend the load of UT2004, re-allocate memory, then continue the load... right?

just wondering

Headrush · Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 9:02 pm Post subject:

Sanome · n00b Joined: 02 Feb 2005 Posts: 51 Location: N.W England

For interest, just after boot-up and onto the desktop, I'm on roughly:

Fluxbox - 43 mb

XFce - 55 mb

KDE (kdebase) - 93 mb

(to name a few)

that's before I start Firefox etc, were it quickly jumps up

- I can feel a thread coming on