Intrepid Memory Usage

[Schroeder]

Upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 went smooth (even using the graphical upgrade manager...wow!) but everything seems to run pretty sluggish.

I checked the memory usage using top and with my 512MB of RAM 450MB are used running just this Firefox session.

Is this normal?? :confused:

UPDATE: The same behavior for kernel 27 and 24. So its obviously not the kernel.

[stick_figure]

I just upgraded to 8.10, and I use a lot more memory than I did under 8.04. I now have a problem with video playback, where I get black flicker and cross-hatching while watching movies in vlc, mplayer, or totem. If I close firefox and amarok, my memory usage lowers, and I don't have those symptoms. I have 2 GB of memory, this shouldn't be a problem.

Also, as a baseline, when I booted up in 8.04, memory usage was around 15%, now when I log in in 8.10 it's around 50%. A large portion of that is cached, so it's hard to really know what's going on, but it's a problem. What's changed since 8.04? A gnome upgrade?