Post your 'free -m' with screenshots

[user1397]

Yup, kinda like the conky thread, but with this one all you need to do is as soon as you log in, open a terminal and type free -m to see how much memory you have/use in megabytes. It's probably fairest if the only app you have open is the terminal (excluding anything running in the background) just to be able to compare yourself with others (if you like that sorta thing).

Here's mine (Dell Mini 10v Ubuntu 9.10 minimal + gnome-core and a few essential apps):


$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 993 210 783 0 19 102
-/+ buffers/cache: 88 905
Swap: 251 0 251

[earthpigg]

running Masonux (ubuntu based, made by me :P ), Hulu Desktop is playing Babylon 5 on the left monitor.

running: pidgin, hulu desktop, firefox, and pcmanfm running on LXDE.


[chris: ~]$ f
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 5966 1764 4202 0 168 453
-/+ buffers/cache: 1142 4824
Swap: 0 0 0
[chris: ~]$

[user1397]

running Masonux (ubuntu based, made by me :P ), Hulu Desktop is playing Babylon 5 on the left monitor.

running: pidgin, hulu desktop, firefox, and pcmanfm running on LXDE.


[chris: ~]$ f
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 5966 1764 4202 0 168 453
-/+ buffers/cache: 1142 4824
Swap: 0 0 0
[chris: ~]$hmm, i'm interested in seeing how much ram you use without any other apps running, just with the default desktop and terminal open...i tried lxde on my same netbook, and it actually was using more ram, about 100MB more than what I posted...thought that was odd.

[ctrlmd]

looks like there are no difference between windows 7 memory usage and ubuntu
they both use memory with about 1 g

1047m 485 actual use and the rest are cache.
Edit Picture
http://i47.tinypic.com/dfj4ti.png

[user1397]

looks like there are no difference between windows 7 memory usage and ubuntu
they both use memory with about 1 g

1047m 485 actual use and the rest are cache.
how do u check memory usage in windows, i tried mem but it displays it in bytes, dont know how to put the mb flag on

[Onyros]

Arch + Fluxbox + conky + idesk (icons hidden behind urxvt - pseudo-transparency FTW)= 43MB used after booting.

[NightwishFan]

Posting from Debian Unstable AMD64. Using 35 out of 874 MB of RAM.
Edit: (Using command line with w3m)

[Zoot7]

Debian Testing with Xfce4.

[NightwishFan]

Debian Unstable XFCE4. Just finished the install, I was updating to unstable on CLI during the above post.

[MooPi]

http://i559.photobucket.com/albums/ss36/MooPii/Assorted/th_2010-02-24-161633_1440x900_scrot.png (http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss36/MooPii/Assorted/?action=view&current=2010-02-24-161633_1440x900_scrot.png)
Chilli'n to Norah
http://i559.photobucket.com/albums/ss36/MooPii/Assorted/th_2010-02-24-162539_1440x900_scrot.png (http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss36/MooPii/Assorted/?action=view&current=2010-02-24-162539_1440x900_scrot.png)
(http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss36/MooPii/Assorted/?action=view&current=2010-02-24-162202_1440x900_scrot.png)

[n0dix]

free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2024 1154 870 0 70 544
-/+ buffers/cache: 539 1485
Swap: 996 0 996

[robertcoulson]

Here is mine...But I don't really know what it means...???
Robert

[n0dix]

Here is mine...But I don't really know what it means...???
Robert

Total = Total memory you have, 1 Gb
Used = use by your system.
Free = Total - Used
Swap = hard drive memory.

[robertcoulson]

OK...That makes a little more sense..???....Thanks.
Robert

[urosg3]

urosh@urosh-desktop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2005 1551 453 0 57 1038
-/+ buffers/cache: 455 1549
Swap: 972 17 955


Nice thread.

[imbjr]

This has been confusing me for the last few days:


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3957 2547 1410 0 172 1738
-/+ buffers/cache: 636 3321
Swap: 5122 0 5122


The above suggests that the majority of my 4Gb is used, but when I fire up the system monitor GUI, only 16.1% (638.1Mb) of 3.9Gb is used.

What is that used column really measuring?

[cariboo]

This has been confusing me for the last few days:


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3957 2547 1410 0 172 1738
-/+ buffers/cache: 636 3321
Swap: 5122 0 5122


The above suggests that the majority of my 4Gb is used, but when I fire up the system monitor GUI, only 16.1% (638.1Mb) of 3.9Gb is used.

What is that used column really measuring?

Check the line I bolded, it gives a truer reading than the system monitor, as it adds it's own over head.

[imbjr]

Check the line I bolded, it gives a truer reading than the system monitor, as it adds it's own over head.

AHA!

Thanks. Still, tho, that first part of free seems quite misleading.

[snova]

AHA!

Thanks. Still, tho, that first part of free seems quite misleading.

The first row displays memory usage. However, a large portion of this is just disk cache, or buffers, and is not exactly "used". If memory becomes scarce those areas of memory will be reclaimed.

The second row is how much the system is "really" using, because it doesn't include cache.

[Sam]

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 493 488 5 0 17 83
-/+ buffers/cache: 387 105
Swap: 953 55 897

This is an old PC running 8.10 through Wubi, that a friend lent me, because my box mobo died suddenly.

[kagashe]

Running Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD with only Firefox running:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2953 803 2150 0 90 443
-/+ buffers/cache: 269 2684
Swap: 0 0 0

kagashe

[Milos_SD]

Here is mine.

[cap10Ibraim]

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_tcUf5ZJRmuc/S4Z3pxw0zTI/AAAAAAAAAIE/dkMVl6oeTTQ/Screenshot-5.png

[user1397]

Here is mine.
Geez! how are you using 7GB of ram?!

[blur xc]

Geez! how are you using 7GB of ram?!

$10 says running a few virtual machines-

It's funny to note though, how few can follow the outlines given by the op- fresh boot up, nothing else running except the terminal window used to enter free -m.

BM

[falconindy]

Didn't feel like shutting down my screen session...

http://omploader.org/vM28xeQ

Why I have a 4gb swap, I do not know...

[n0dix]

Didn't feel like shutting down my screen session...

http://omploader.org/vM28xeQ

Why I have a 4gb swap, I do not know...

You probably are wasting your space in hard drive. ;)

[Mahngiel]

:d

[user1397]

$10 says running a few virtual machines-

It's funny to note though, how few can follow the outlines given by the op- fresh boot up, nothing else running except the terminal window used to enter free -m.

BM
haha, yea surprisingly few people are doing so, but whatever it doesn't really bother me ...that much :)

[RabbitWho]

You want me to just close everything I'm doing? No. maybe when I start up next time I'll paste the fresh stats.

Oh and for the guy above that thought 4GB swap was bad... Next time round I won't be so silly.

[The Real Dave]

Geez! how are you using 7GB of ram?!

Actually, he's only using 3.6Gb.

Here's mine, with Firefox, Rhythmbox and Office 2007 Word through Wine. Yup, Office 07. If you don't believe me, take a look at this (http://linuxexpresso.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/office-2007/).


dave@system64:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1377 1360 16 0 24 573
-/+ buffers/cache: 763 614
Swap: 996 12 983

My Crunchbang desktop uses around 180Mb with Openbox, Ryhtmbox and Firefox running. I usually aim so that average use is less than 50% of max RAM usage. I also now give much more swap space, after having a rogue process lock up my server by swallowing all of it's RAM.


dave@an-lar:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 362 346 16 0 70 113
-/+ buffers/cache: 162 200
Swap: 2078 39 2039

http://linuxexpresso.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/server_htop_28-feb-2010.png?w=150h=150 (http://linuxexpresso.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/server_htop_28-feb-2010.png)

[user1397]

bump

[urukrama]

Pekwm on Debian Testing.

[standingwave]

~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 8069 553 7515 0 96 238
-/+ buffers/cache: 218 7850
Swap: 9601 0 9601

[Onyros]

Pekwm on Debian Testing.I'll cover your 33 and raise you a 23 (just kidding ;))

It's an Eee PC 701, with Arch + Awesome WM (an older build).

[urukrama]

I'll cover your 33 and raise you a 23 (just kidding ;))

It's an Eee PC 701, with Arch + Awesome WM (an older build).

Nice. Once you get the RAM usage so low, it is hard to take people who claim a distro is "light" when it consumes 258 MB RAM on start up very seriously. :p

My Thinkpad with 64 MB RAM can run X, musca, Opera, vim, urxvt, screen, and htop on Debian Testing with only 19 MB (and 26 MB swap). I'll see if I can remember to post a free -m output here.

[Onyros]

The thing is that it is my day to day config throughout my systems, with full HAL hotplugging, fam, rpcbind, bitlbee, and a few other services running in the background. Like that system monitor script, which consumes by a full MB by itself. Most of it is X.

This last year I've seen my RAM usage in Arch go way, way down instead of what's happening with Ubuntu, for instance. And that's without doing much or losing any kind of functionality.

258MB at startup isn't light by any means, that's just crazy. This very moment I have 234MB used, but I have three urxvt terminals (mutt, irssi+bitlbee and rtorrent with a few torrents seeding and downlading), PCManFM, gFTP transferring 25GB of files, music playing in a Windows-only player (Foobar2000 through WINE, because of the convolver plugin, it just *can't* be replaced - and it's still just using 20MB of RAM) and Opera with 9 tabs.

Last time I tried a full GNOME installation I remember RAM usage being below 100MB of used RAM at startup. Then I went full-time Fluxbox - which is also really light, BTW - and then... tiling.

I don't necessarily choose apps by their RAM usage, I just use what I feel comfortable with, but a system with more than 512MB is just overkill for me.

[NightwishFan]

Ubuntu 10.04 (Firefox is the killer, at 113mb) I also have 'vm.swappiness = 100' set.

Perhaps I should switch to Debian Sid... :o

[user1397]

bump

[slakkie]

Without screenshot



$ uptime
11:57:22 up 363 days, 23:04, 10 users, load average: 0.10, 0.05, 0.01

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1001 977 23 0 3 783
-/+ buffers/cache: 189 811
Swap: 2933 170 2763


$ uptime && free -m
12:01:16 up 102 days, 10:07, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2018 1591 427 0 347 736
-/+ buffers/cache: 506 1511
Swap: 2588 0 2588

$ uptime && free -m
12:01:14 up 1:45, 7 users, load average: 0.86, 0.74, 0.70
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1000 943 57 0 11 474
-/+ buffers/cache: 457 543
Swap: 2000 23 1977

[NightwishFan]

Ubuntu is getting to be a heavyweight...

[user1397]

Without screenshot



$ uptime
11:57:22 up 363 days, 23:04, 10 users, load average: 0.10, 0.05, 0.01

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1001 977 23 0 3 783
-/+ buffers/cache: 189 811
Swap: 2933 170 2763

geez 363 days uptime, quite impressive!

only one more day to go for a full year...cannot quit now! :popcorn:

[phrostbyte]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 5982 1602 4379 0 146 608
-/+ buffers/cache: 846 5135
Swap: 3812 0 3812


How it looks in a terminal is left to your imagination. :)

[phrostbyte]

Didn't feel like shutting down my screen session...

http://omploader.org/vM28xeQ

Why I have a 4gb swap, I do not know...

That's a pretty hot prompt you got there. :D

[user1397]

Didn't feel like shutting down my screen session...

http://omploader.org/vM28xeQ

Why I have a 4gb swap, I do not know...How exactly did you make your terminal look like that?

[swoll1980]

I even managed to use some swap for once.

[Sam]

How exactly did you make your terminal look like that?

By changing the prompt variable (PS1). Have a look in .bashrc or try the application byobu.

[Phrea]

I only reboot about once a month, and I have a good few programs running, but here's mine anyway:

~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3962 3819 143 0 131 2636
-/+ buffers/cache: 1051 2910
Swap: 4769 207 4562

[spupy]

~ $ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1897 1494 403 0 54 781
-/+ buffers/cache: 658 1239
Swap: 2996 0 2996

[_h_]

Lucid Lynx Beta 1 64bit, full Compiz effects enabled.


~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3010 507 2502 0 36 213
-/+ buffers/cache: 257 2752
Swap: 8816 0 8816

[walkerk]

[~] free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2894 538 2356 0 15 273
-/+ buffers/cache: 250 2644
Swap: 0 0 0

[ashwinrao]

desktop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 939 830 108 0 85 392
-/+ buffers/cache: 353 586
Swap: 3074 0 3074

[tica vun]

*

[user1397]

By changing the prompt variable (PS1). Have a look in .bashrc or try the application byobu.
the only thing I understood there is the .bashrc file...

[keithpeter]

http://bodmas.org/pages/images/free-m-comparison-screenshot.jpg [300Kb, jpg ]

As OP wanted. It's Lubuntu 10.04 beta 1 with ureadahead removed, and with a plain openbox session running.

I can get 10 to 15Mb off this by using bare bones openbox running on top of a CLI installation, but I'm still scratching my head about getting automounting of external drives to work properly then.

This is an Asus Pundit AH2 with nvidia integrated graphics (nouveau driver).

[urukrama]

I can get 10 to 15Mb off this by using bare bones openbox running on top of a CLI installation, but I'm still scratching my head about getting automounting of external drives to work properly then.


Try Thunar with thunar-volman.

[ceelo]

GNOME with AWN, Compiz and Firefox running

Openbox with Tint2 and xcompmgr comes in about 150MB less.

[infestor]

free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3019 1702 1317 0 210 925
-/+ buffers/cache: 565 2453
Swap: 1907 0 1907

[Dawei87]

here's mine!

[tom66]

Here's my computer. Xorg is a major memory hog, about 465 MB (phys+virt) consumed, I think due to a memory leak in fglrx or DRI...

[TheNerdAL]

http://i39.tinypic.com/2wd3hnk.png

Is that bad? :O

[NightwishFan]

It should be fine, but I would get some more ram if possible. :)

[Khakilang]

Here's mine.

152888

[keithpeter]

Try Thunar with thunar-volman.

<OT>
Nope, I think its permissions thing. Neither Thunar or pcmanfm will automount the drives, but pmount works once you install pmount and hal.

I'm reading about policy kits, and trying to work out what they did in Lubuntu to get this working.
</OT>

[user1397]

Just something funny that I thought I should mention because it's ram-usage related.

So I tried installing ubuntu minimal and then installing openbox and just a few applications (I tried to not install anything with gnome dependencies as much as possible), and then when I tried free -m, I got like 430 mb....now I'm running lucid minimal gnome, and its back to ~250mb......weird

[user1397]

here's my new desktop's free -m

[spupy]

Right after logging-in. Arch+KDEMod.
Later I will compare with Ubuntu 10.04 on my netbook.

[user1397]

Right after logging-in. Arch+KDEMod.
Later I will compare with Ubuntu 10.04 on my netbook.

Hmm I thought you would use a little less considering its arch, interesting.
EDIT: ah, you do have 2 other programs running, guess that makes sense.

[spupy]

Hmm I thought you would use a little less considering its arch, interesting.
EDIT: ah, you do have 2 other programs running, guess that makes sense.

Actually a ran "free" before starting any programs.
I still think 250MB is quite low for what that KDE setup is offering.

[Austin25]

Here it is.


austin@austin-laptop0:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3708 2494 1214 0 83 1267
-/+ buffers/cache: 1143 2565
Swap: 10862 0 10862
austin@austin-laptop0:~$

[PaulW2U]

Here's mine showing 4GB of RAM and usage after 6 hours of uptime.

[MooPi]

I think I've done this before but in the spirit of cooperation.

[FuturePilot]

Mine.


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3018 2950 67 0 183 1437
-/+ buffers/cache: 1329 1688
Swap: 5035 48 4987

[NightwishFan]

Current one, not really using much RAM surprisingly, I am working on a lot of stuff.

[redfox1160]

eric@grossboys-laptop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2004 706 1297 0 50 384
-/+ buffers/cache: 271 1732
Swap: 3151 0 3151

http://a.imageshack.us/img5/1342/freem.th.png (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/freem.png/)

[cariboo]

My atom powered media center PC, Lucid minimal with LXDE and XBMC installed:

[NightwishFan]

Nice Cariboo, what model is it?

[cariboo]

My system is home built, using:


D945GCLF (http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/d945gclf/d945gclf-overview.htm) Motherboard
atom 230 cpu 64-bit w/hyper-threading
1Gb PC5400 ram
Seagate 160Gb hard drive
Samsung slim DVD/RW
InWIn BM639 (http:///www.in-win.com.tw/products_pccase_series.php?cat_id=1&series_id=49) Case


The system will be 2 years old in January, it's almost time to replace it. :)

[conundrumx]

http://i.imgur.com/zub8w.png

Hmm...