On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:43:55 -0500 Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> > I used to have 8 GB on the system, and it would start to thrash at > > about 7+ GB usage. I recently ugrade to 16 GB; memory usage is > > currently over 8 GB, and it seems to be slowly but steadily increasing. > > Presumably you bought 16GB to make use of it, right? Yes, and so I can do things like development, with IDEs and emulators that consume additional GBs of RAM, while leaving my usual applications running. > So it's only natural for your OS to try and put that memory to use. > Any "free memory" is memory that could potentially be used for something > more useful (IOW "free" = "wasted" in some sense). > > It's normal for memory use to increase over time, as your OS finds more > things to put into it. > > Of course, that doesn't mean that the concept of excessive memory use > doesn't exist. Just that it's hard to characterize. I understand all this, at least in general terms. > Do you actually experience a concrete problem (like your system getting > sluggish and making too many disk accesses to swap things in&out of the > RAM)? As I mentioned (briefly) in my original post, yes, I experience concrete problems: the system either grinds to a halt or becomes unresponsive, or hits swap and becomes intolerably slow. Since upgrading to 16 GB a couple of days ago, I haven't had problems yet, but I used to see the problems I mentioned when I had "only" 8 GB ;/ Celejar