I'm not sure if the problem is caused only by Chrome, but it seems to cause the worst of it. When I leave my computer on for a while, usually with a browser window and a few tabs open, my system memory slowly fills up. However, the memory does not go down much when I close out of all applications. When I have a fresh slate after rebooting, there's usually about 700-800 MB used. After closing all apps, there can be up to 5 or 6 GB still used. When I look in the System Monitor Processes tab, the total of all the running apps is much lower than the amount of memory shown to be used in the Resources tab.

What's causing this? I'm getting tired of having to reboot all the time to clean it out.

Linux Mint 18, MATE desktop
Dell Inspiron 5559; 8GB RAM

I'm a little confused by your question. If your computer has 8gb of RAM, and you are only using 5 or 6gb, then you have 2 or 3gb free, and there is no problem. There's certainly no need to "reboot to clean it out." That would be like saying, "I went on vacation, and noticed my suitcase was 75% full, so I drove home to drop off some of my clothes to make more room."

(edit) This site explains the concept much more eloquently than I can: http://linuxatemyram.com

But the memory is not available, but also not being used by anything. I don't technically NEED to reboot unless I'm going to be running a game, but the point is that a bunch of memory is still being used after I close out of everything.

*reads the site you linked* Ok, that makes sense ... but the graph I'm looking at shows the cache as a different color than the actual used memory. (attachment 1) The lighter green shows the used memory, the darker green above it shows the cached memory, and the black at the top shows unused memory. The light green of used memory is what grows up and doesn't go back down. This makes sense for the cache, but it's not the cache that's staying full. (Maybe just the graphs are picking up the wrong data?) The System Monitor >> Resources graph (attachment 2) shows the same level as the used memory, disregarding the cache the other graph shows.

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Here's an experiment you can try:

1) Reboot the machine so everything is "fresh."
2) Start your stopwatch.
3) Launch Chrome.
4) Load a bunch of web pages.
5) Stop the stopwatch and make note of the elapsed time.
6) Quit Chrome.
7) Start Chrome again.
8) Load the same web pages.
9) Stop the stopwatch and compare this time to the first time.

I bet you will find that Chrome loaded faster the second time, because of the cache.


Which game are you trying to play, and what specifically happens when you try to launch it? Does the computer crash? Freeze up? Give an error message (and if so, what is the error message)?

I've just never run games when the RAM looked full. I have a little system resources graph on my taskbar, so I'm always eyeballing my memory usage. I guess I just have to change how I interpret the RAM graph.

If it needs extra RAM to run the game, Linux will clear some of the cache and/or move data from RAM to Swap. If I am interpreting your screenshot correctly, you have 17.6gb available for games (5.2gb RAM + 12.4gb Swap).

If, on a regular/routine basis, your RAM is approaching 100% and you are using a significant amount of Swap, then you might get a nice performance boost by increasing your RAM from 8gb to 16gb. The reason for this is that RAM is faster than Swap (especially if you are still using a spinning hard drive as opposed to SSD).

I actually am planning to get a SSD and 16G RAM kit; just waiting on the money. :3 Thanks for the help.

Read linuxatemyram