How much RAM are you using now?

[Sunnz]

The Linux vs. Vista thread has been discuss about RAM lately: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2622667#post2622667

I guess they just used top(?) to see how much RAM are they using?

Applying the same "scale" they are using, I guess my OS X Laptop now is using 864M of RAM at this moment?


MemRegions: num = 5824, resident = 236M + 17.5M private, 110M shared
PhysMem: 216M wired, 386M active, 262M inactive, 864M used, 159M freeIt is the RAM usage of my system "right now", not a reboot with least software loaded to boast up (or boast down?) how much RAM I have really using.

I'll put up the RAM usage again when I get to reboot into Kubuntu.
EDIT: Just rebooted, my Kubuntu (+Compiz) is using 533MiB on the very same MacBook:

Mem: 1004088k total, 545848k used, 458240k free, 36692k buffers
Swap: 499992k total, 0k used, 499992k free, 242836k cachedHowever it is a new install (just installed last week.) and it is a fresh reboot...

P.S. my laptop has 1GiB of RAM, and is shared with graphics hardware, if that makes any difference...

[deadlydeathcone]

Top is a pretty poor way to monitor memory usage system wide, as itcounts buffers as used memory, which is really only a technically correct to monitor memory usage.

A much better command is
free -m

Mine looks like this:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 947 916 31 0 37 421
-/+ buffers/cache: 457 490
Swap: 1160 39 1121


What you really want to pay attention to is the part I bolded, as it takes cached memory out of the equation. The reason for this is that on Macs and Linux cached memory is used to dump commonly used, non-essential data to ram so that it doesn't have to pull it off the hard disk when it's needed, which gives a bit of a performance boost, and as it's optional shouldn't be counted. In addition it can be cleared in a hurry if another process has better use for the memory used. On a similar note Vista also has a similar feature, but I have no idea how it works and am frankly terrified of it. :guitar:

Hope that helped.

[savagenator]

well, i have 3gb. With vista about 1gb is used up off the bat. After about a days worth of playing around, ubuntu with beryl uses about 1gb

right now its

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3019 2801 217 0 104 2071
-/+ buffers/cache: 626 2392
Swap: 0 0 0

[obviouslyshane]

mine looks like this :) but I'm doing several things... listening to music, posting on here, and ripping cds.



total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2026 1389 636 0 86 1040
-/+ buffers/cache: 263 1763
Swap: 5930 0 5930


Vista used about a gig doing nothing, kubuntu used about 600 megs doing nothing, and ubuntu with desktop effects, doing nothing uses around 200 megs...

[JNowka]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2018 598 1419 0 30 298
-/+ buffers/cache: 270 1747
Swap: 3851 0 3851

After 3 hours of my laptop running. Surfing net, using VMware for a while, and working on some apps I have in development.

[maniacmusician]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2026 1966 59 0 88 1288
-/+ buffers/cache: 589 1436
Swap: 3145 0 3145


That's with 4 firefox windows open (if you count all my tabs, that's 27 pages open) , Konversation, Amarok, Gaim, Kopete, Konqueror, Kaffeine and Beryl running. That's pretty good.

edit: that's after about 10 hours of uptime.

[waxapple]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1010 994 15 0 22 430
-/+ buffers/cache: 541 469
Swap: 1223 470 753


Laptop with 1gb RAM

Azureus, Beryl, aMSN and Firefox running.
after about 1 day uptime

[DarkN00b]

768 MB - swap is never used. :)


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 742088 725432 16656 0 41388 359860
-/+ buffers/cache: 324184 417904
Swap: 1646620 0 1646620

[~LoKe]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1010 717 293 0 17 381
-/+ buffers/cache: 317 693
Swap: 502 0 501

[Mateo]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 997 14 0 5 715
-/+ buffers/cache: 275 736
Swap: 0 0 0

2 instances of firefox open, 2 gnome-terminals, bluefish, and rtorrent running in the background.

[crimesaucer]

My Conky says:

61% of 495 MiB of RAM

and 1% of my 1.85 GiB SWAP


free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 495 452 42 0 22 119
-/+ buffers/cache: 310 184
Swap: 1898 37 1860

[argie]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 233 219 13 0 1 45
-/+ buffers/cache: 172 60
Swap: 713 141 572

System's quite responsive. I wonder what all that swap is.

[crimesaucer]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 997 14 0 5 715
-/+ buffers/cache: 275 736
Swap: 0 0 0

2 instances of firefox open, 2 gnome-terminals, bluefish, and rtorrent running in the background.

Do you not need a Linux SWAP file? I'm still new to Linux, so I'm not sure if this is a dumb question.

[Tundro Walker]

Man, I wish I would have read your inquiry before voting. I have 1gb of RAM on my computer, but I'm only using about 400-500mb of it when running normal stuff, like Firefox.

Of course, I have vm.swappiness turned down to 0, though, so my swap file isn't used much at all, while my RAM keeps getting loaded up until it has to ferret stuff off. So, there may be ~100mb excess crap in there.

[maniacmusician]

Do you not need a Linux SWAP file? I'm still new to Linux, so I'm not sure if this is a dumb question.
Swap is optional...it's not required, but it is usually beneficial to your system. Even if you don't need it, it usually doesn't do much harm to have it enabled. I've never seen my swap being used at all (unless I'm using one of my older computers, of course)

[tbroderick]

-/+ buffers/cache: 172 300


Stupid Firefox.

[crimesaucer]

For the most part my swap doesn't get used much, but I have noticed it used a few times, so I'm glad I installed it.

[maniacmusician]

For the most part my swap doesn't get used much, but I have noticed it used a few times, so I'm glad I installed it.
It can be quite handy. Technically though, you have to install it. Ubuntu doesn't let you forego that step. A swap partition is required when installing the OS. But, after you install it, there are ways to turn swap off.

[jkblacker]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 503 458 44 0 62 161
-/+ buffers/cache: 234 269
Swap: 1035 163 872


Now I don't think that's too bad for a laptop nearly 2yrs old and only 512MB RAM; it's firefox and Beryl and a terminal. Even surfing and listening to music and chatting on gaim only takes it to just over 50%.

[Fitzy_oz]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 964 47 0 33 706
-/+ buffers/cache: 223 787
Swap: 839 33 806

[Quillz]

I use 1 GB in both my desktop and laptop. Works fine for me, I don't need much more at the moment.

[v8YKxgHe]

I currently have 4GB, however being on a 32bit OS I can only use just over 3gb.

[PartisanEntity]

Currently running Firefox, Evolution, Gaim, Skype:


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2027 653 1373 0 94 286
-/+ buffers/cache: 273 1754
Swap: 2839 0 2839

[TheTruth34]

running firefox, evolution mail, folding@home

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 961 50 0 159 497
-/+ buffers/cache: 303 708
Swap: 2957 58 2898

[use a name]

633 MB, with a few resource-hogs running.

[silkstone]

With Firefox and a couple of gdesklets running...


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1510 587 923 0 32 333
-/+ buffers/cache: 221 1289
Swap: 3725 0 3725

[B. Gates]

Um... eh... I'm running Vista at the moment and I can't quite answer the question, since my monitor isn't wide enough to fit in all the digits of this memory usage meter here.

[Sunnz]

Heh he Mr. Gates, didn't your development team implement this thing called "word wrap" on Vista? ;)

[justaguynpc]

FireFox, Synaptic, Beryl and Terminal:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2026 815 1210 0 74 332
-/+ buffers/cache: 408 1617
Swap: 956 0 956
justaguy@feisty:~$

[Spr0k3t]

Oops... I didn't read the first post and took the poll, it's not defined enough in the voting explanation. So, with that said, I'm using approximately 800MB total on a 3GB system. I'll have to check when I get back home.

[reacocard]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 995 960 34 0 145 185
-/+ buffers/cache: 628 366
Swap: 1200 0 1199


This is after about 3-4 days of continual operation, with beryl. Xorg leaks memory on my system, I think. It's using almost 100MB right now. :shock: