Every time I reboot my computer, my memory usage is pretty low (well...yeah, not as low as it should be in my opinion, but not horrible). I'm talking about like 120 or so, maybe as high as 150. However, the more and more I use my computer, the more the memory increases.

Right now it's at 328mb. What in the world?!

I have a few browser windows open, gaim, and that's it. Period. Nothing fancy.

What is going on? Is there an equivalent to "page files" used in Windows in Linux?

...help appreciated.

(note: running RH9, gnome).

[ray@user1-188 ray]$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 500 488 11 0 35 277
-/+ buffers/cache: 175 324
Swap: 797 0 797

Linux uses the ram as buffer and cache, it tries to fully utilize what you have. For the free -m output from my computer, you can see I have the ram almost 100% used (in the Mem row), but actually the programs only use 175MB (in the -/+ buffers/cache row). If some other program requests for ram resources, the kernel will release those portions used for buffers/cache. Hope it helps.

[david@zeus david]$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 500 299 201 0 19 140
-/+ buffers/cache: 138 361
Swap: 980 0 980