RAM: Does linux require as much ram as Windows XP?

Hangdog42 · 04-16-2007, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bandwidthjunkie

I have 1Gb of very fast ram (two matched sticks) I run kde with two screens, have firefox, thunderbird, kate, a load of pdfs, some music or video player open, kile and probably a few services I don't need and all of my ram seems to be committed all of the time, at least 750Mb is always in use. I am quite surprised by this, but kde seems to be a real memory hog.

So what is the problem? RAM is there to be used, and that is exactly what Linux does, uses all available RAM. Would you really prefer that it start using swap? If you've got that load and your computer seems slow, then maybe there is a problem, but if performance is fine, it is just Linux using RAM the way RAM should be used.

Quakeboy02 · 04-16-2007, 01:57 PM

RAM is good, swap is bad. 'nuff said.

bandwidthjunkie · 04-16-2007, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hangdog42

So what is the problem? RAM is there to be used, and that is exactly what Linux does, uses all available RAM. Would you really prefer that it start using swap? If you've got that load and your computer seems slow, then maybe there is a problem, but if performance is fine, it is just Linux using RAM the way RAM should be used.

I never said that there was a problem, I said that I was surprised. I built the computer myself and as of the latest gentoo kernel all of the hardware is fully supported: it is very fast and I am very happy with it

Koentje · 04-18-2007, 12:14 AM

I have just 128 mb

And I running Ubuntu