Memory usage reported using TOP

Kdiver58 · 02-03-2003, 12:54 PM

I had posted a problem about Linux being slow and the harddrive writing all of the time. People posted that 64 megs of ram was a little light and so I typed top in terminal and saw that
95% of the ram was being used and that the swap was not being used much. I figured I had a ram problem and left it at that .
Well I have just doubled the ram , 128 megs, and when I check it with top I get that again only a small portion is free . What am I missing . Does this just not matter ? Thanks .. K

rshaw · 02-03-2003, 01:31 PM

alot of people are spooked by the way linux manages memory, but it's totally normal. think of 'used' as reported by top, as 'spoken for' , most of it is not in active use. if a running process needs memory, the kernel will supply it.