just installed ubuntu, where's my memory????

[binskipy2u]

i installed ubuntu, got it up and running, with all the codecs, etc.. and i open up firefox, vlc, pidgin, thunderbird, and a torrent client, and i'm using 3.7 gigs of ram???????????????????

ive installed bum, stopped all the unnessesary stuff, what gives????

someone help.. i run top and have 120 things running i run htop and have 160
help someone?

[whoop]

You sure it's not just cache?

[binskipy2u]

Mem: 3797440k total, 3771876k used, 25564k free, 25008k buffers
Swap: 1502036k total, 2216k used, 1499820k free, 3175436k cached


there's alot cached..but look at the mem total and 3.77gigs used.
this is bothering me, this a clean install, with just the goodies added and some service tweaks regarding BUM and sessions,services, etc..

any other ideas?
thanks

[ddrichardson]

Linux manages memory differently to many operating systems, the adage being unused RAM is wasted RAM. There are some good explanations of this:
http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html