Memory usage goes up

[2009tester]

free command reveals that
i hv 250mb occupied after boot up.

After opening and closing app, the memory usage goes up to 1 gb.

But , after closing all the apps, the memory usage remains high with little decrease.

Why is that, memory remains occupied?

[gapan]

Of course. RAM isn't useful if it's not being used.

[hakerdefo]

Hi! Just read following and your worries regarding the ram usage will go away,
http://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Cheers!!!

[2009tester]

it is interesting.

is the disk caching something like "preloading"
or "adaptive read-ahead" package in Ubuntu and Fedora?
Those distro have separate package for preload.

[Atip]

Free Memory

as root

Code: Select all

echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

[sojurn]

Free Memory

as root

Code: Select all

echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

You can and this won't disable caching but except for maybe testing or benchmarking I don't know why you would.

The memory with cached data is already free if something needs it, explicitly clearing cache seems an unnecessary action first of all, and if you need the cached data again it would take much longer to get it from disk than from memory, giving you the worst of two worlds, not the best of them. In my understanding anyway.

I can't resist.... This is my Salix 13.37 LXDE on a fresh boot (old Sempron machine):

-/+ buffers/cache: 95 used, 2162 free.