as you can see on my profile, i have 512 MB of ram. im running icewm, with a superkaramba thingy running.

long stroy short, if i use linux as my normal user for about 10 minutes, the memory usage jumps from 80 MB to somwhere about 300 MB or higher. ill post the "TOP" command later when i can access my linux partition.

what might be the jump and how can i clean out the used RAM ?

Could it be you have too many services running?

I can answer your problem.

I can see you come from a windoooowzzz background.

Thing's you should know.:
---------------------------------
*Unix does not use memory like windows.
*Unix will Always use 100% of your computers memory (if you did not know that you do now.)

If you want to understand why this is so.
I am shure there is lots of books/url's out there explaining the way UNIX uses memory.

o, thanks. yeah, i've been a windows user for a long time. thanks. so when the memory's out it uses swap space ? i only have 50 MB of swap, should this be enough ? even though i have 512 mb ram .

I am no expert, but I can give you my understanding of this. First, Linux actually uses memory and has the abillity to reclaim resources. However, since you have 512MB why clear memory when a program or service closes unless it is needed. Since it is not, it will keep the memory intact. However, since it tracks it and can reclaim it, if you start another program and do not have enough memory for it, it will go ahead and reclaim some of the existing memory.

I have also found that linux will also use some swap. I haven't figured this out completely but I know it is true. This is a very simple view of memory management, but it has worked for me. If you want to understand a little more indepth, just do so googling.

PhilD

thanks a lot. thats expains a lot. ive always wondered why linux needed swap space, so i always made my swaps small. thanks again. i think i will do some more googling.