memory

[anton]

Hello,

It's a fresh install of Mandrake 7.0 , I'm using KDE. Have 512MB RAM. And in Memory Info it says , that :
Total Memory - 496MB USED!(76%)
Phys. Mem - 497MB USED(75%)
Virtual Mem - 0(0%) Used.

Why is it so many ??? Even windows didn't use that much ? Do I have some misconfiguration somewhere ?
Help me , Pls.

By the way , apps that are running now : Licq,GAIM,X WinCommander,Konqieror.

Thanks,
bye.

[Jeepsta]

Linux caches files in memory for quicker access but when you load a new program it will write those files to disk to clear RAM for that program. I felt the same way you did when i first started Linux.

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Its a jeep thing... You wouldn't understand.

[FoBoT]

in other words, its a feature not a bug!

[anton]

But where did he got 400 megs of files if I almost didn't have anything open ; )

Thanks ; )

but another question , will it clear the memory , when some other program will require it ?

[posterboy]

OK, every time you spin the disk, Linux remembers it in cache. The more you spin, the bigger the cache. Want to watch it work? Load Netscape, observing the disk light and the time required. Kill it , then immediately load it again. See? Now, when you NEED that memory, to start a program, linux will spin the cache out to swap, or abandon it, if need be, to give memory back to the "free" pool. You can watch this happen too, with some of the visual monitors available on the net. A normal linux box, after a few hours, will have about 10% memory free. It's all being put to good use, instead of just "idling".
HTH, Ray

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ray@raymondjones.net
HTTP://www.raymondjones.net

[Strike]

Originally posted by anton:
but another question , will it clear the memory , when some other program will require it ?
Yes, Linux marks certain pages in memory as "cached" or "buffered", and those are the first to go (in that order, IIRC) when another program needs them immediately.

To see your real free memory, open up a console and type

free -m | grep s/c | awk '{print $4}'