On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Gary/Owen - > > Thanks for the quick response from both of you. > > I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it > from my memory soon after learning about it. My analytic approach to some > things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief > is nearby. > > I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the "problem" of freeing inactive > memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down > interactivity. I don't see it doing it, even though it must be. Under my 4G > 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop > everything while it freed some inactive memory. > > Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated > (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user > level (spinning wheels!).
I still get spinning whatchamcallits, even with Apple's own apps (especially iTunes - I have my music library on my Time Capsule, served over the wireless network, so it's primarily the first time after not having that volume mounted for a while). Same goes for Mail.app - spinning wheels at times. Spinning wheels are more frequent as free memory gets lower, but even with lots free, still some spinning. I must say that despite not really being a fan of Microsoft, Windows 7 does perform very well (even in a 2GB VM). If I had it to do over (or next time), I would look into a laptop with Linux as the installed OS, and running Windows under VMWare or VirtualBox. I mainly went with another MacBook Pro in case I want to do iOS development, and to stay in Apple's good graces, a "Hackintosh" doesn't cut it. ;; Gary > > I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly > otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user? > > I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new > high-memory machines. I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny > (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to > time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, > none of my applications are actually *using* swap space? Isn't that the > point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available? I would > expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what > processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the > tools from the "golden days of UNIX" are still relevant! > > - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
