Hi All,

Need some helps with the relation ship between Operating system(OS) and Memory. My question are how OS will assign or access to the Memory ? basically when we have 2 memory vs 10 memory, We do see the Size is getting bigger. But how do we know which memory is in use or idle?


Any one has any idea please share it.


Best Regards,
kn87

Hello and welcome to LQ,


Sorry but your questions don't seem to make a lot of sense.


What do you mean by "2 memory" and "10 memory"?


The other parts about "what memory is in use", there are commands for Linux, and probably for Windows and MAC, but I don't know them all, which will tell you what memory is in use, as well as other details.


For Linux, I suggest you look up the "free" command. Also suggest you review the man page for that command and look at the bottom of the man page in the SEE ALSO section. There are related commands cited there.


As far as how OSes access and use memory. That's a very open and broad topic. You really should read information about things about those topics, for the OSes which you are interested in. There is a whole section in Linux documentation about the memory management portion of the kernel, and I'm sure there's tons of discussions one can find which contain thoughts about how to do it differently.

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If you want to how much ram is being used in a linux system you can use Htop. On the Htop pic I sent the ram the system is using is 1.87Gb out of my 6GB total.

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He probably means memory slots/cards, and how the Kernel divides and reserve memory among them when using memory for the OS.

if you are interested here is a link which explains how memory is handled by linux kernel: www.linuxatemyram.com
If you want to know something else please describe your problem better.

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

To make things easier and to better serve future questions, I suggest that you look at https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...#faq_lqwelcome so you can compose a better query that will provide information so we can help you.

Another good reference would be How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

Several good links in my signature that will help you to learn.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

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Maybe the better question is; what is the role of memory to begin with?

In a nutshell: to support the processor, otherwise things would be very, very slow. Because it's only memory the processor has a direct path to, it does not have a direct path to your disk, it therefore must go through the drive's controller(s) to get to the disk - any disk. Have a look on the back of your motherboard/mainboard/mobo/whatever else you want to call it, and you'll see a line going from one of the memory pins directly to one of it's processor pins.

As far as the OS is concerned, it uses memory because of the above - that's pretty much the "relationship" in a nutshell, and to put it all very simply.

But of course there is always a far more "in depth" answer...