Everyone obviously knows what a memory leak is. Some other OS-es tried to patent it.

Today I was looking at Ksysguard on my laptop (Debian Lenny, KDE 3.5) and I saw that used memory was gradually decreasing! With the same rate, free memory was increasing, or the opposite of a memory leak.

I guess I had been looking at some web pages which I just closed, and I also close document in Adobe reader. Usually you'll see a big step in free memory increase, but what I saw was a very slow increase, which lasted for minutes, freeing 16 kB chunks at a time.

I cannot draw another conclusion than that garbage is working very well on this system. Great implementation!

jlinkels

Well, there must be a tiny hole in one of your RAM modules. Those 16 kB chunks leak off, then the system fan blows them off the case, after a little hovering around they settle down on the floor. And then comes vacuum cleaner ... and all your precious bits find their end in a dump yard. Sic transit gloria mundi. ... I suggest you take a piece of chewing gum and fix it.

It is not a leak, it is the opposite.

jlinkels