Why does Lixux need so much RAM??

[sandy0]

I'm very new to Linux, so bear with me. I've noticed that many of the people here are using huge amounts of RAM just to get decent performance. I put Mandrake on a Pentium 166 and upgraded to 96MB Ram and it is pretty darn slow! I have a pentium II 266 with only 64 mb of Ram with Windows ME that performs better. I know the processor makes a difference, but Linux does seem to require more RAM than Windows. Am I correct in that observation and if so, why is that?

[Muzzafarath]

Are you sure it's Linux eating up all that memory and not your window manager?

[n2linux]

Mandrake is notorious for eating RAM especially if you don't do a customized/advanced installation to eliminate the bloat. Check your background processes...chances are you have some stuff running that you don't need. And if your KDE or GNOME, then that is another story.

[binaryDigit]

i'm using a p133 laptop w/ 32m of ram.
if i run kde or gnome it is slow
if i run netscape it is slow.

if i run IceWm it barely uses any ram at all.
the place i used to work at had a laptop that was also a p133 w/ 32m of ram.
it ran win95 and ate up every bit of ram it could.

[Tyr-7BE]

Yeah I had 64 Megs of ram and Mandrake ate it all! Debian performs beautifully on small amounts of ram...you just have to be careful not to overdo it on the procs. I threw in another 128 megs and Mandrake did well, but not nearly as well as Debian does. Debian is NOT recommended for newbies however, unless you have some sort of book (and I mean text-book calibre) on installing and maintaining debian.

[DMR]

Try running the "top" command; It will show your currently-running processes, and list the percentage of CPU and memory usage for each. If you find any non-essential processes running, epecially memory-hungry ones, kill em!

[sandy0]

Thanks for the tips and suggestions. When I installed Mandrake, I did the "recommended" install, which is easy if you're new, but installs a lot of crap I don't need....don't want. In fact there is very little I do need on this computer since it is going to be used as a tool to learn Linux and not much else. It also is not using the larger of my two hard drives. So now that I know a bit more.........I'm planning on reinstalling using "custom install", see if I can get it to use my larger drive as primary drive and install what I want and need. I need a decent word processor which albi word seems to be and of course.....the Gimp! The Gimp really works well and is surprisingly rich in features. I need Netscape to check out viewability of pages I create for my websites. I won't install it on my windows machines :) For desktop manager, I really like Black box the best, and will probably install KDE (it's the most like windows, which is what I' use to) and xfce. I plan to dump the gnome, sawfish, etc. and most of the programs I don't need right now. If I can learn how to use Linux for something more than "learning", eventually I will put it on a computer that has a bit more power. I just ordered a "burned" cd of Red Hat 7 update and am going to try and install that on a Packard Bell Pentium 75 I have that is just taking up space :D Red Hat is free for the cost of postage at http://www.lsl.com/ If I can get Linux to run right on a Packard Bell, anything is possible!! ;) I will check out the resource use tips you all suggested before I do all of this. :) Thanks again

[nextbillgates]

Linux? Taking up too much RAM? Hmmm...

I was running Slackware for two weeks with only 128MB and no swap partition, and never noticed it until I looked at the memory usage in top. That says something right there. If I did that in Windows, it would keel over and die pretty quick.

[ph34r]

Hrm... I run Slack on a 486 laptop with a whole 4mb of ram, and while I have to put it on a diet, it works. When I put in the RAM card for it and bumped it to 8mb, it runs everything console fine. Look in the "how I did it" forum for my post with outputs of free, etc.


On the other hand, I have 224mb in my main box, and I am about to add more since I am getting a second CPU. But, running KDE, Mozilla, XMMS, XChat, a few consoles, XQF, and gkrellm, my output from free looks like:
sj@s71:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 225056 206060 18996 74700 10332 140752
-/+ buffers/cache: 54976 170080
Swap: 56220 0 56220
sj@s71:~$


[ 04 March 2001: Message edited by: ph34r ]

[Aikidoka]

I have 384mb RAM but I've hardly ever go over 64mb of usage. I would be running gTV, licq, xmms, xchat, netscape, gkrellm, at least one console, some epplets and I may hit 70mb, maybe. I also dual boot to win98SE so that's the main reason for the large amount of RAM.

[Windows rules!]

Originally posted by sandy0:
I'm very new to Linux, so bear with me. I've noticed that many of the people here are using huge amounts of RAM just to get decent performance. I put Mandrake on a Pentium 166 and upgraded to 96MB Ram and it is pretty darn slow! I have a pentium II 266 with only 64 mb of Ram with Windows ME that performs better. I know the processor makes a difference, but Linux does seem to require more RAM than Windows. Am I correct in that observation and if so, why is that?

See? Why use that piece of crap if it takes so much ram?? Use Windows instead it performs a lot better than that Dicksucker OS Linux crap!!!
MY ADVICE IF YOU DIDN'T ALREADY NOTICE IT: Delete Linux and use Windows instead you mutha****a!!!

[x]

Could we please keep the discussions a bit more serious - we don't need the m*f*, a*-h* and all that.
We have different ideas, different likings - but we are all grownup I guess, and we're not in a kindergarten.

[chimaybleue]

If you install Drake with the custom install, you won't really see a difference ... If you want a REALLY custom installation, you'll have to go thru an Expert install ... But, as I don't like Drake, I'd recommend Suse, which is simple to install, but gives a real control over the sys ... But that up to you ! :D

[GodSpira1]

With 64mb, windows is much better performing than Kde.

With 128M, its about the same, with a slight edge to linux.

The key is to have a swap partition. (not installed by default). If you've already installed LM 7.2, you can reinstall, telling it to shrink your first ext2 partition by 120 megs or so, and then adding a new partition (should automatically make it swap).

200-256mb total mem + swap is good.

Many programs (netscape) appear to look for swap space, and use it even when memory is available.

[bkurt]

Well, I think where a lot of people get confused is that linux doesn't need very much memory at all if you are not running X. Not running X you can get away with 4mb of memory quite nicely. But the average newbie and user are probably going to be running kde or gnome since they are most windows like. These will take a decent amount of memory to run fast, especially kde2 in my opinion. I would say if you have 128mb of physical ram and a good swap partition there shouldn't be much you can't do, for general purpose things.

[RageAHolic]

Hmmmmm...the 4MB RAM on my Debian 2.1 powered Laptop does okay for day-to-day stuff...console only of course.

Linux is great because you can customize so that you can maximize the few resources you've got...or you can pimp it out to take advantage of infinite resources...you win either way.

As you say...the Linux kernel and its GNU tools don't use a lot of resources...X and X-based apps (read Netscape :) ) do .

[ 05 March 2001: Message edited by: RageAHolic ]

[sandy0]

Came back to see what additional comments had been posted. With the exception of the "foul mouthed son-of-a-Bill", I found them useful in view of my experimenting over the weekend. I've posted another question in "technical support" which I hope some of you will respond to. I have a pentium 166, 96mb of ram and 2 harddrives. I want to experiment to see what the best partitioning configuration might be for Mandrake, since that's what I have right now :) Since I'm not sure what programs/desktop managers I want to use on a permanent basis I really want to "try them all" and go from there. So far, Xfce works the best :) The dependencies for some of this stuff is almost as bad as dll's :) You can't just dump gnome for example, without losing functionality somewhere else.