Most of my many Linux installs boot up to a memory use of 170-190 MB with no open or running programs. But with Ubuntu 9.10 it shows; 305-310 MB and the top RAM use item is the; compiz.real, which I think is a display desktop effects application. I have the nvidia video card driver installed, and that nvidia X-Server configuration tool. Also I can not find where that compiz options is at, ( the display options in system, preferances does not open, and says to use my video card tool ).

if you want to turn off compiz in ubuntu then you go into System > Preferences > Appearance, then you go to the visual effects tab and click the "none" radio button

Okay I will try that, and thanks. Does anyone know why the RAM use is so much more in the newer Ubuntu 9.10, when compared to other major Linux ? It is not a big deal since this computer has 2 GB of memory, but just do wounder what is the memory hog, thanks.

Probably the fact that the Linux kernel has so many device drivers built into it that the drivers cause bloat - over 10 million lines of code, in fact. But unlike Windows, in Linux, the bloat is good bloat. It is proof that the kernel, especially Ubuntu's, supports more hardware than it used to. Perhaps even more than Vista and Windows 7!

Okay then and thanks for the information. When I again booted into my new Ubuntu 9.10, it then showed only about 185 MB of memory used. So I then did go turn of the visual effects, which dropped it another 30 MB. I did see at a thread about Linux allocates RAM for disk or system cache, but it remains available if needed for applications.

Remember, that in linux the system will cache things in RAM so that they can be launched into action faster if they are needed again. To get a better picture of memory usage, run from the terminal:
Here is an example from my Slackware 13.0 64bit system, and with no desktop effects:
As you see I have 2GB RAM. In the "used" column it says 1267 megabytes are being used. But consider the -/+ buffers/cache line. That line indicates that I am only actually using 453mb of memory and that 1556mb is actually "free" in the sense that it is available to run apps if needed. If you add the 453mb that is actually being used, + the 735mb in that cached column on the far right, + the 78mb in the buffers column to the left of the cached column, you get (approximately) the 1267 that the
"free -m" command says is being "used".
It is good to maximize the use of your available memory. That is what it is there for.
Note that my swap partition is not being used at all.

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ram is something you can never have too much of, however, it is definately wasted when not in use, if the system can use it to optimise its load speeds then that will mean you will have a faster OS as compared to one which doesnt, even if it is using more resources.

Gnome system monitor shows the same information as the 'free' utility.

In my case however, they both show about 1.2 GB of memory used (EXCLUDING cache) without running any applications.

Out of this, in the processes, I have THREE Xorg, each taking between 250 MB and 300 MB of ram (with two users logged in).

Alos, the SWAP is being used (about 300 MB)

O have a total of 2 GB, so the system still runs...

But SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (that I use at work), uses under 300 MB total, with many window open (including firefox with 5+ tabs). In this case, Xorg never uses more than 30 MB of ram.

So.. why Xorg in Ubuntu uses 10 times more RAM than in SUSE?