RAM problem on Ubuntu.

**sayeedhossain** · January 30th, 2021

I have in total 4 gb + 4gb = 8 gb RAM in my machine. The problem is that, when i wanna to check the free RAM then I think there are some problem . Because you can see in the following image , total is 7.2 Gi and used is 4.2 Gi but free is only 131 Mi . But you know the free RAM should be (7.2-4.2)=3 Gi. Please tell me anyone what actually the problem .

**Impavidus** · January 30th, 2021

Counting ram use isn't straight-forward. Part of your ram is used for buffers and cache. It is not free, but available for use if some application needs it. Memory used for buffers and cache isn't reported as used by the free tool. See man free for details.

**ActionParsnip** · January 30th, 2021

What is the output of

Code:

free -m

**sayeedhossain** · January 30th, 2021

Thanks a lot.Now I properly understand. Actually I didn't calculate buff/cache memory . That's why the problem was raised

**Hund** · January 31st, 2021

If it shows 7.2 GB, it could be because that you have a laptop* with shared memory. Which means that you might have 8 GB in total, but X amount is reserved for the graphics chip.

* It's most common on laptops, but I've seen SBCs doing this as well.