PDA

View Full Version : [ubuntu] 12.04 RAM Usage?



d4m1r
May 6th, 2012, 05:58 PM
Hey guys, coming from 11.04 and 11.10, I could tell right away 12.04 was using more RAM but why is that? When I would first login to 11.04 or 11.10 and nothing was running, the system would idle anywhere from 300MB RAM usage to 400MB RAM max. When I login to 12.04 now, it uses anywhere from 500MB to 600MB as shown below, with nothing running, why is that? :confused:

http://i.imgur.com/8KRxil.png

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

linuxmatt7
May 6th, 2012, 07:28 PM
It is because of the more processes running in the background and the extra stuff added in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. If it is to heavy for you DO NOT TRY Kubuntu that takes up even more. Than try Xubuntu I think it should work perfectly if you can run Ubuntu 11.10.

d4m1r
May 7th, 2012, 03:50 PM
It is because of the more processes running in the background and the extra stuff added in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. If it is to heavy for you DO NOT TRY Kubuntu that takes up even more. Than try Xubuntu I think it should work perfectly if you can run Ubuntu 11.10.


I asked because I thought 12.04 was supposed to be more efficient and reliable :confused: So far it does look like it's more reliable but it is definitely not more efficient if it just adds extra processes on on top of 11.10....Did anyone else notice this idle RAM increase or is it just me?

philinux
May 7th, 2012, 03:58 PM
I asked because I thought 12.04 was supposed to be more efficient and reliable :confused: So far it does look like it's more reliable but it is definitely not more efficient if it just adds extra processes on on top of 11.10....Did anyone else notice this idle RAM increase or is it just me?

You have 8 gig ram I have 2. After being on for two days it's using 1 gig according to sys monitor and it's running really well. (64 bit install)

And yes at first login it is using more ram than previous. Unity and compiz I suspect.

lukeiamyourfather
May 7th, 2012, 04:06 PM
Generally speaking newer software will require more memory. Every little feature adds up but the tradeoff is the additional functionality. Not trying to sound like a jerk, but why do you even care? The difference is less than 2% of the memory in the system. Also if memory usage is a concern there are lighter weight distributions like Xubuntu.

Paqman
May 7th, 2012, 04:08 PM
If I had 8GB of RAM I would be trying to load as much as possible into it. Every extra process loaded into RAM is another one that will react quickly. Pulling stuff off the disk sucks compared to having it in RAM, even with an SSD.

You are never, ever going to run low on RAM in normal use with 8GB. So use that extra capacity: load it up to the max. Install preload, cripple swappiness and go hard on ramdisks.

NikTh
May 7th, 2012, 04:19 PM
Hi ,
can you see the output of top command and free -m ? i think they are more accurate than system monitor.
System monitor utility also loads in Ram.
Thanks

d4m1r
May 7th, 2012, 04:31 PM
I never said it is affecting my performance, and while yes I do have 8GB of RAM, I still care about closing unnecessary processes or memory hogging applications. Eventually, if you just say "Oh, I have xGB of RAM, let everything run", you will run out...RAM is not infinite and I was just hoping 12.04 would be more optimized and less resource intensive than other releases.

How much RAM an OS uses is a good indicator of its overall quality because it says a lot about the programmers memory management skills. For example, Windows 7 for me idles at 1GB so 500MB for Ubuntu is much better, but I was just expected too much more of a gap I guess...

Paqman
May 7th, 2012, 04:42 PM
Eventually, if you just say "Oh, I have xGB of RAM, let everything run", you will run out...

Not of anything actually useful. Linux is good at managing memory, it'll quietly drop things out of cache before anything that's actually running is affected. The only way using all that RAM would be a problem is if you were actually running 8GB of stuff. Which is just not going to happen for normal desktop apps. You'd have to be runnning some really hardcore apps to eat 8GB (eg: scientific simulations, big data sets, 3D modeling, etc)

I get that you want to optimise your system, but you have absolutely nothing to worry about from a couple of hundred MB being used for the desktop baseload. There's absolutely no way it will affect performance on your system.


How much RAM an OS uses is a good indicator of its overall quality

Only in the case of comparing two identical apps with identical features. If I have app A with a certain set of features, and app B which is a fork of that app with one feature added that consumes a small extra amount of RAM, is B of lower quality? No, of course not. There are too many variables to make RAM use a reliable proxy for quality.

2F4U
May 7th, 2012, 04:44 PM
I never said it is affecting my performance, and while yes I do have 8GB of RAM, I still care about closing unnecessary processes or memory hogging applications. Eventually, if you just say "Oh, I have xGB of RAM, let everything run", you will run out...RAM is not infinite and I was just hoping 12.04 would be more optimized and less resource intensive than other releases.

How much RAM an OS uses is a good indicator of its overall quality because it says a lot about the programmers memory management skills. For example, Windows 7 for me idles at 1GB so 500MB for Ubuntu is much better, but I was just expected too much more of a gap I guess...

You may be right but you need to realize that all that eyecandy and many things that make the system more comfortably to use are taking resources. Of course, you can turn off some of these things, but then your user experience will be different. All the big desktop environments such as Gnome, KDE and Unity tend to consume more resources because they want to be more user friendly. On the other side, desktop environments such as XFCE and LXDE are often considered not to be user friendly. You probably can't have both and probably have to make a decision on what you value more.

lukeiamyourfather
May 7th, 2012, 04:50 PM
Only in the case of comparing two identical apps with identical features. If I have app A with a certain set of features, and app B which is a fork of that app with one feature added that consumes a small extra amount of RAM, is B of lower quality? No, of course not. There are too many variables to make RAM use a reliable proxy for quality.

A huge +1.

eyelessfade
May 21st, 2012, 11:46 AM
I've also seen this on virtual machines. They was running just fine with 256MB on 10.04 (128MB was a bit to little, fine on deb sarge though), Now on 12.04 I get "FATAL -> Failed to fork." mails from cron. If I give them 512MB it goes away.