Linux memory usage - ONE MB free?

[Shudder]

I have 384 megs, and Linux knows I do so it's not saying 64 or anything. But it said I have 1 free meg, 220 cached, and the rest is used. What's with the cached memory, and is it used quickly and effectively? I was basically running gnome with sawfish and maybe Gaim and mozilla. Shouldn't be using all my memory like that no?

Is Linux pretty conservative with the swap file? Only about 20 megs was being used, not that I care, I'm just more curious about this.

 

[Elledan]

I've no exact details about the memory use of Linux, but important difference with Windows is that it first uses all physical memory before it creates a swap file. Since everything is kept in memory if possible (i.e. there's enough RAM), things will go much smoother when running heavy tasks, like compiling.

On a PC of mine with 64 MB RAM Linux runs definitely smoother than Win2k and makes good use of the memory. I had to decrease the size of the swap file in Win2k and increase the amount of RAM to gain the same results for Windows.

 

[mcveigh]

Linux is very efficient with ram, if it's there it's gonna try and use it, no sense in it going to waste?
if an app needs more it will adjust. use the "top" command to see what processess are using what

 

[DeeK]

Top is horrible for reading memory usage. You might see seven processes of the same program, each listed as using 10% of your RAM. In actuality, they all use the same 10%. Also, the memory usage of X includes the video RAM.