Carlos E. R. wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > The Wednesday 2007-09-19 at 08:11 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote: > >> I routinely run multiple konquerors, firefox, thunderbird, kate, >> multiple console windows and open office on 10.2 and I rarely exceed >> 870K of memory. I have been more than happy with 1G in that situation. >> See below: >> >> top - 08:04:03 up 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.11 >> Tasks: 107 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie >> Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.2%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, >> 0.0%st >> Mem: 1035320k total, 483276k used, 552044k free, 16436k buffers >> Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 324472k cached > > I do exceed it: > > Mem: 1036384k total, 1021784k used, 14600k free, 35176k buffers > Swap: 6297440k total, 322332k used, 5975108k free, 252932k cached >
I wonder if it doesn't use whatever it can. I didn't notice reaching the ceiling often on my 1gb system, but now that I've upgraded to 3gb, it seems to be up around 2.5gb all the time now. Not sure my set up is all that different, either: Mem: 3115440k total, 2983084k used, 132356k free, 268676k buffers Swap: 2104444k total, 0k used, 2104444k free, 1987272k cached In general, the more memory the better, and I'd say that these days, 1gb is a bare minimum. 2gb is more like it. More than 3gb and you start having to worry about memory magic numbers kicking in (ie, whether you can use 4gb or more all depend on a variety of factors, from CPU & motherboard to operating system). Actually, looking at the Memory setting in KDE info (you can see this by running 'kcmshell memory' from the command line), it looks like it does use it and the number shown by top is very misleading. According the the tip shown by the memory display: "Most operating systems (including Linux) will use as much of the available physical memory as possible as disk cache, to speed up the system performance. This means that if you have a small amount of Free Physical Memory and a large amount of Disk Cache Memory, your system is well configured." My numbers are Free Memory 9%, Disk Cache 65%, Disk Buffers 6% and Application Data 17%. So to test, I loaded a bunch more apps - Amarok, Banshee, GIMP, digiKam, YOU, and KDE help. My numbers went to Application Data 33%, Disk Cache 57% and Free Memory 2%. So the number from top isn't very useful, as the 'buffers' number is merely that, the Disk Buffers. It doesn't take into account the "Disk Cache". htop shows four different kinds of memory usage - used/buffers/cache/free and the number at the right is the 'correct' number: Mem[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||######**********************************************1008/3042MB] Where I really am using 1gb out of 3gb that isn't a cache that will be shrunk or grown based up need. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials: http://www.linuxbraindump.org Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
