Memory Fun

I saw the article http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-memory.html? which discusses how to reduce your memory footprint in Linux. I decided to check it out and play around. I booted my computer and issued the free command.

I had 385876 available, 266060 used and I had 851404 in my swap and 0 being used

I then launched GAIM, Firefox, and Evolution. My used jumped to 343732 but still nothing in the swap.

I then launched a streaming radio station, gFTP, and Text Editor. These are the things I typically run when I edit webpages (the majority of what I do on the computer) My used memory jumped to 374880 and there still was nothing in the swap, but I was getting close.

Based on the article, I use the biggest memory hogs... Firefox, OpenOffice, and Gaim, but they don't seem to be a problem. My system doesn't go REALLY fast, but it isn't unbearably slow either.

I checked out the system monitor and it showed only a few items using over 1 mg. Firefox was the worst at almost 20mg. The other thing was that the applications still took up memory, but they were "sleeping" after I closed them.

So I didn't get anything really useful out of the article, but maybe someone reading this will.