So I was doing some research for one of my classes the other night and noticed that I was running something like 90%+ of my memory running in my programs, the remainder was cached. Over the past couple days I've been running my linux box and noticed that when I start the machine and first log into X it's using about 2.5 to 4.0% of my memory. However after a day or so of being logged in, X process is consuming 11% or more of memory. I didn't used to have these problems when running in the i586 version of Mandriva.

My daily activities usually involve running Amarok, most of the day, signed into several accounts on Pidgin, and surfing the web, maybe watching a few flash videos on youtube.

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem or if it's an isolated incident and I'm the only one who is having this problem. If so it's all good, I have more memory on the way. But I'm still wondering what's happening.

System:
Distro: Mandriva 2009 Powerpack
Architecture: x86_64
Window Manager: Gnome 2.42.0
X11: 1.4.2-10.1mdv2009.0
Memory: 2GB

Just looking for an idea if X is leaking or if this is just nothing and I shouldn't worry about it.

X keeps grabbing memory as it goes. It will keep taking more memory until you close down some apps that have been running for a long time. You might also be running a program in the background that causes X to consume memory. Some video drivers cause this, and programs like rsync, and wget.