Joshua Jackson wrote:
> Top shows that I'm using 70MB RAM free, but Gkrellm says that I have
> 170MB free. I guess I'm not so much concerned about the number
> difference, as much as, why isn't Linux more RAM managing?
Actually, your top shows 7MB of RAM free, not 70MB. This is as it should be; the
ideal figure is nearly *zero* RAM free, because that means your system is
*using* all of your RAM as efficiently as possible, unlike Windows which leaves
it idle until you load Office or something else huge. Your system will not be
slow for having ``no RAM left:'' for example, it is in the screenshot buffering
72MB worth of disk accesses.
If the swap space in use (your screenshot shows only 4MB, a trivial amount) gets
much above your RAM size, and note that you should have allocated at least twice
as much swap space as you have, your system *may* begin to slow down. On the
other hand, the stuff in swap is likely to be a bunch of things that you're not
currently using anyway, so you should be pleased that your system has evicted it
to disk (swap space) in order for the RAM it used to be better employed
elsewhere. You will also be pleased to note that 104MB of it is being multi-used
by several programs.
I have no idea where gkrellm is getting 170MB from; it could be the sum of
shared and buffered, or free swap plus buffered less something else, but I can't
see any simple and sane source for that datum.
--
The man who doesn't read great books has no advantage over the
man who can't read them. -- Mark Twain
