XFCE memory consuming?

[Kok, Auke]

larry wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 07:37 +0200, Tino Keitel wrote:
> 
>> Totally off-topic, but:
>>
>> free -m | grep bufffer
> 
> Thank you. I'm just trying to find the reason of the fact..
> 
> I am running xubuntu feisty fawn with xfce 4.4. The system occupies all
> my ram. Is it normal?

short answer: yes

long answer: yes, linux always tries to use ALL available memory in every system
for cache and buffers.

A system with 512mb memory will quickly see all of it consumed. Even 1gb machines
will use almost all of it just running a few applications. Even if your machine is
not swapping, you will usually see that the kernel occupies and works best if
using about 90 to 95% of system memory.


example: here's a box with 4gb of memory that only runs in console mode. This box
often sits untouched for days:

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4037664    3850508     187156          0      84848    3371252
-/+ buffers/cache:     394408    3643256
Swap:      2031608        152    2031456

note that it has only 180m free, and a whooping 3.3gb (3.4 gb if including
buffers) of memory used for disk caching. So, out of 4.0gb, this box only really
uses 0.4 - the rest of the memory is bonus.


Cheers,


Auke