Free up ram in Linux?

melinda_sayang · 04-24-2004, 12:54 AM

I explain a little bit. The first time you run OpenOffice, it is slow but for the second time it is much better. The first time you run KDE applications in Gnome desktop, it is hell. But for the second time it is much better.

Of course most of you know the things I talk about. They put some their stuff in memory so the next time you run the applications, it will load faster.

But consider this...... I run OpenOffice, close it, run KDE applicatons ( k3b ) in Gnome desktop, close it, run many gdesklets ( that need high resources ), and suddenly I want to play 3d game like Neverwinter Nights that need memory. Ok, I close the gdesklets applications. But the some area of memory are still in use by OpenOffice, or k3b although I have close it.

Is there anyway I can free this cache memory without having to wait for some time?

In windows u can get this softwares:
http://www.magellass.com/prod-mm.html
http://www.liutilities.com/products/...papers/paper5/
http://www.contactplus.com/products/ram/

Thank you.

beejayzed · 04-24-2004, 02:26 AM

I thought the kernel automatically freed up that mem when it was needed.

melinda_sayang · 04-24-2004, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by beejayzed
I thought the kernel automatically freed up that mem when it was needed.

Yeah, if you depend on kernel, it takes time. I need instant way to free up ram.

zer0snr · 04-24-2004, 10:40 AM

Strange coincidence......read your post this morning......get to work and find my mem usage high too......have nothing running in the background (ie, no user appl.'s).

Just out curiosity did a search and stumbled on the following......for what it's worth...

Memory Response

Newbie here and still.....

Shade · 04-24-2004, 11:53 AM

The way the linux kernel caches memory is totally different from what you're used to under windows.

Check out free or free -m

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           249        244          4          0          3         87
-/+ buffers/cache:        153         95
Swap:          282         25        256

It says i've only got 4 megs of free memory. That's misleading. I've really got 91 or more. Cached memory is freed instantly on demand. When more ram is needed for an application, the cached memory is flushed or moved to swap. It's very efficient. All your libraries are kept in memory, even while not being used -- until the space is needed for something else, or the library is needed again.

--Shade

sh1ft · 05-01-2004, 10:07 PM

check out this very interesting article about tuning linux swapiness. It dicusses exactly what you guys are talking about here.