Why is Xubuntu using 300 RAM

[-gabe-noob-]

you heard me right, Xubuntu 8.04 is using 300 RAM on my system...

[bufsabre666]

i bet firefox is a good chunk of that

[-gabe-noob-]

49 mb's... how about the other 250?

[FuturePilot]

Well the machine I run Xubuntu on doesn't even have 300MB of RAM. Not even close

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 186 175 10 0 13 86
-/+ buffers/cache: 74 111
Swap: 541 107 433

[bufsabre666]

everything else? my kde uses 700mb with usually about 100 to firefox and ktorrent

so 250 compared to 600 isnt that bad

[-gabe-noob-]

yea but I swiched from gnome cause i wanted everything to be FAST!!!

and that was using around 300 runing compiz among other things

[bufsabre666]

Well the machine I run Xubuntu on doesn't even have 300MB of RAM. Not even close

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 186 175 10 0 13 86
-/+ buffers/cache: 74 111
Swap: 541 107 433


well look at your swap usage, ive never even had more than 4mb in my swap, the computer assesses what you have and knows how much it can put everywhere

[bufsabre666]

yea but I swiched from gnome cause i wanted everything to be FAST!!!

and that was using around 300 runing compiz among other things

try e17 or flux

sry about the double post

[gsmanners]

I'm running Xubuntu with about 2000 apps installed along with Firefox and several other apps (and I just got through using K3b), and I'm still only at 272 MBs.

[-gabe-noob-]

anyways I don't know how to customise XFCE like i custimised gnome...

[Tatty]

Linux uses memory a little differently to windows. When software gets closed on a linux machine, it doesnt remove it from the RAM, it will only remove it if the space is needed by some other software.

The idea is that if you open the application again shortly after closing it (most of the time it is the same software that is run again and again) then it is already loaded into RAM so it doesnt take as long to start.

Try it, open firefox, then close it, then open it again, It will be much quicker the second time because it is already loaded into ram.

So the 300Mb will be the total amount of memory that has been used by software from when you first booted.

To find out how much memory is acutally needed by software right now you need to run the "free" command in a terminal and then subtract the used cache from the used memory. for example on my machine:


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 964328 955244 9084 0 828 341660
-/+ buffers/cache: 612756 351572
Swap: 2827400 43284 2784116

So the amount of memory being used atm on my machine is 955244 - 612756 = 342488

So around 342Mb is being used - which sounds about right cos ive got a lot of big things open at the moment.

[-gabe-noob-]

Anyone know how to install a theme in XFCE?

[-gabe-noob-]

Nice post tatty.

[cardinals_fan]

Anyone know how to install a theme in XFCE?
Copy the folder to /usr/share/themes/ and select it under UI Settings / WM Settings.

[myusername]

actually xfce just takes getting used to. but i can customize things better in it

[swoll1980]

If your pc has the ram the os will use as much of it as it can to make things run faster that doesn't mean you need 300mb of ram to run Xubuntu. Ive seen puppy linux using over 500mb of ram before on a copy I installed on my friends pc, but you only need like 8mb of ram on a system which has it installed on the hard drive

[andrewabc]

Xubuntu using 300mb of ram is very wierd. My default ubuntu install on a pentium4 768mn ram computer uses around 300mb of ram. Same for my new computer with 3gb of ram. It uses 250mb ram on startup, then uses some more for firefox etc.

[shrimphead]

Copy the folder to /usr/share/themes/ and select it under UI Settings / WM Settings.

~/.themes/ works too and doesn't require root privaleges

[TenPlus1]

300mb is a bit much as my Gnome 8.04 install boots into 100mb usage at desktop, with up to 60mb for Opera, up to 20mb for Deluge and 10 for Pidgin...