Is Gentoo bad at Memory Management

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

As the topic says, is it? My physical mempry usage just keeps going up. I open a program use it for a while, and close it and the Used Physical memory doesn't ever go down. No matter what program I open, and then close, be it instantly or after some usage, the memory only goes up, but never down when I close things. Right now I am running KDE, Super Karamba, aMSN and Firefox and I'm at 221 MB used. And I close everything and it will stay the same. What's wrong, is that just the way it is?

EDIT: Correction, when I close things the useage goes down but not much.

Mattwolf7 · n00b Joined: 14 Mar 2004 Posts: 73

That's how Linux handles memory. Memory is useless if it isn't being used. Linux keeps certain things loaded even after being closed because there isnt a reason to replace it until it runs out of memory. This is more efficient because alot of librarys are used so it doesnt need to load them all again

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

So If I run out of memory is it going to go to the swap file or is it going to unload something?

kill · Apprentice Joined: 25 Dec 2004 Posts: 179

It's going to unload the oldest unused thing.

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

Ok, well that clears alot up then.