Ubuntu Eats My Memory

[Brian Fahrlander]

Ruben Laban wrote:

> In your output of top it shows "1383868k cached". So basicly there's roughly 
> 1.3GB of memory 'in use' as cache. If you'd use the command "free -m", you'd 
> see that the cache isn't 'really' using the memory. Cache memory can be freed 
> when a program needs it.

     Yeah, the Linux memory system is fabulous. I once was working with 
a  set of full-page newspaper-sized JPGs. Each one was about 10M or 
more, and there were 200 or so on the volume.  I wanted to copy them 
someplace; I was watching TV at the time, and didn't realize how much 
memory this was going to take.

     For 20 minutes the machine rumbled and strained, as it ground to a 
halt, but it continued to make all the thumbnails, cleaned up after 
itself, and presented everything as asked, and I didn't need to reboot 
or anything.  Coming from a Windows environment, I wasn't expecting 
everything to work out.

     Linux actually _uses_ memory; whatever's just sitting around, it 
uses the space to hold library routines and things, ready at a 
millisecond's notice to dump them and make room for 'real' storage. 
It's a very sweet design!

-- 
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  Brian Fahrländer                 Christian, Conservative, and Technomad
  Evansville, IN                              http://Fahrlander.net/brian
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