I have 512MEG of RAM installed, and when i first boot, its like in the 400 range of free RAM. Now if I were to run a program that copyies some large files (for backup), my ram gets down to 100 and under.

If I am browsing the net, eventually I will arrive with under 100 MEG of Free ram -and the problem is that I can never regain all that RAM - some sort of memory leak

anybody else have a similar problem - i know XP was not so bad with RAM usage.

I am using Mandrake 8.1

and another question Are there any memory freeing apps for linux?

Regards

Shelton.

The linux kernel is very agressive with RAM. Rather then leave a bunch of space not being utilized, the kernel will cache things making it faster. If more ram is required the cache will get dropped making way for new applications.

How much RAM is enough?? I though 512 was enough for a Linux box

Regards
Shelton

shazam75, is your computer running slow? If not, then there is nothing wrong with 512 meg ram. As Crashed_Again stated, linux is using your ram to its fullest. Do you want to have 512 megs of ram and only use 128? Unless your system is running slow, there should be no problems.
This is were XP does not use your ram to the fullest.

right when the kernel will NOT use all the ram as cache like windows then that is a kernel bug.
Linux used to have this bug for people with huge amounts of ram say over 4 gigs but now that is fixed i think.

anything you need will be freed up
i say this alot but with modern processors and MMU your processor has a 4gig wide virtual ram space. it is false or an outmoded way of thinking or something to envision ram as being used or free at all.... each and every process has full acess to all your ram and more at all times.

When I get down to like 10 MEG free - yes my computer runs slow, thats after I have visited a view weg pages packed with gifs and played xine a few times - thats why I think there is some memory leak (possible)

regards