Ubuntu RAM usage - should I be concerned?

[Copps]

Have been monitoring system load through the "top" command. The PC I'm using has 1GB of RAM installed. According to the output below (if I'm interpreting correctly), I only have about 20MB which is not being used ?

In terms of what I am running, one Firefox browser window, rhythmox, terminal and XGL. Anyhow, here's that top output. Any ideas?

top - 20:11:57 up 1:07, 2 users, load average: 0.36, 0.69, 0.82
Tasks: 84 total, 1 running, 83 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 14.8% us, 3.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 70.0% id, 11.0% wa, 0.4% hi, 0.5% si
Mem: 1036096k total, 1015004k used, 21092k free, 5868k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 18920k used, 2077552k free, 693356k cached

################################################## ########
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4997 steve 15 0 107m 22m 13m S 8.0 2.2 2:13.91 rhythmbox
4366 root 15 0 146m 123m 9552 S 2.0 12.2 4:51.43 Xgl
1 root 16 0 1564 524 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.15 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
4 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.09 events/0
5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
6 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
8 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kblockd/0
9 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
116 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
117 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
119 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
118 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.54 kswapd0
706 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
1835 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
1935 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kjournald
2161 root 12 -4 2424 912 368 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.34 udevd
2945 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 shpchpd_event
2979 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kgameportd
3406 dhcp 14 -2 2336 592 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 dhclient3
3498 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.46 kjournald
3889 root 16 0 2152 1192 644 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
3979 syslog 16 0 1768 672 548 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 syslogd
4005 root 16 0 1680 496 412 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 dd
4007 klog 17 0 2400 1328 388 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.06 klogd
4332 root 15 0 10908 1792 1220 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 gdm
4338 root 16 0 11344 2632 1996 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.02 gdm
4371 hplip 16 0 12868 920 696 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 hpiod
4373 root 15 0 27904 13m 3676 S 0.0 1.4 0:11.96 Xorg
4378 hplip 15 0 9408 4680 1100 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.01 python
################################################## ########

[Copps]

Tasks: 84 total, 1 running, 83 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 14.8% us, 3.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 70.0% id, 11.0% wa, 0.4% hi, 0.5% si
Mem: 1036096k total, 1015004k used, 21092k free, 5868k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 18920k used, 2077552k free, 693356k cached

[IYY]

Nothing to be concerned about, I think. Linux is designed to use the memory you throw at it, not impress people with how much of it is going to waste.

That is, unless you feel your system is running too slowly, in which case some application may be hogging the memory.

[aysiu]

http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management

[az]

Originally Posted by Copps Have been monitoring system load through the "top" command. The PC I'm using has 1GB of RAM installed. According to the output below (if I'm interpreting correctly), I only have about 20MB which is not being used ?

Ideally, you would only have about 1 meg not used.

Unused memory is wasted memory.

The kernel will decide which process' memory to dump when the time comes where something needs the ram. Is that what you are worried about?

Linux handles ram a lot differently than windows.

[Copps]

That explains it perfectly. Just another Windows nuance that I've carried over since switching to Ubuntu last weekend.

steve@pc1:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1011        996         15          0          7        675
-/+ buffers/cache:        312        698
Swap:         2047         18       2028

Looks good to me, thanks all