Help, Linux ate my RAM
linuxatemyram.com
Help, Linux ate my RAM
1–10 of 106 posts
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#2Is there any way to have top display this information?
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#3Is there any way to have top display this information?
Use `htop` instead. It displays the information in a bit more verbose way. You'll get each section of "used" memory colour-coded, so that the last yellow area can be ignored as cache.
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#4It's cute that this pops up every few years, and I think it points to a steady (if slow) attraction of new users to Linux.
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#5It's cute that this pops up every few years, and I think it points to a steady (if slow) attraction of new users to Linux.
People say the same things on Mac: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584609
It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern OSes work. That misunderstanding is not the problem; modern OSes are complex pieces of software, and most people shouldn't have to understand them. OSes should just work. The problem comes in when people who don't understand how they work get the itch to "improve" their system.
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#6It's cute that this pops up every few years, and I think it points to a steady (if slow) attraction of new users to Linux.
People say the same things on Mac: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584609 It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern OSes work. That misunderstanding is not the problem; modern OSes are complex pieces of software, and most people shouldn't have to understand them. OSes should just work. The problem comes in when people who don't understand how they work get the itch to "improve" their system.
Programmers need to remember that users are like this: (from an Apple discussion thread)
… [periodically]'installd' begins using 100% of all 4 CPU cores, my fan goes full speed and the whole computer gets very hot. Seems to happen before Software Update checks for updates. I usually go to the terminal and kill the 'installd' process, which reduces the fan speed and heat to normal within a minute.
I wonder if this guy is also one that says you need to reinstall from scratch every few months to keep things working?
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#7Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#8It's cute that this pops up every few years, and I think it points to a steady (if slow) attraction of new users to Linux.
People say the same things on Mac: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584609 It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern OSes work. That misunderstanding is not the problem; modern OSes are complex pieces of software, and most people shouldn't have to understand them. OSes should just work. The problem comes in when people who don't understand how they work get the itch to "improve" their system.
I'm actually continually amazed that even some technically inclined people misunderstand how memory works in /all/ modern OSes: recently I had a discussion on Twitter that went something like this: "OS X is horrible, it uses nearly all of my 8 gigs of RAM and my browser is horribly slow!" to which I replied, "it's perfectly normal for the OS to appropriate the RAM in the fashion you see in Activity Monitor; this doesn't mean your machine is slow due to lack of RAM." Unfortunately, even after a lengthy discussion and several forwarded links, I seem to have failed to make the case.
It would be interesting if someone more knowledgeable than I am were to do a write up explaining memory usage in OS X, Windows, and Linux; would be an awesome resource to share with curious tinkers who may be slightly misguided in their understandings of the inner-workers of their computers.
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#9firefoxatemyram.com is still available. Perhaps we can put a site up there as well.
Re: Help, Linux ate my RAM
#10The cache can be cleared via `/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches`.