where is my RAM?
 

I am trying to install Groundwork open source on CentOS, and it neede at least 1 Gig or RAM.... my cat /proc/meminfo only shows 948Meg available...I have checked the BIOS to see if some RAM is assigned for Video or something, could not find it...

Where else can I look to free up that memory so that I have 1 Gig RAM to install Groundworks Open Source Monitoring System?

Normally the system always use something of the RAM .
How much that depends of you're system .
But nearly never you get the full amount of the RAM you installed

Actualy memory is not used by application, but it is used for disk caching.
If memory is not fully utilized by kernel than it is wasted, by keeping data in cache when an application needs data again it can be provided faster.

Dose taht mean what I see is what I get?

Did you try installing it? What makes you think the "1 Gig" needs to be hit exactly, rather than the typical suggestion for good performance?

Unless your system is desperately short of disk space, a system with 1GB of actual ram usually should have at least 2GB of swap space. If you have enough swap space, almost any program that tries to use a little more memory than available ram would just run a little slower.

Probably whoever decided on that 1GB minimum was assuming their program wouldn't get 100% of it and would expect some swap space to get used. So 948MB available (plus some swap space) should be plenty (more than a typical 1GB system would have) to run a program spec'ed as needing 1GB.

Will you explain what you mean ?