Re: How to optimise memory use?

["nate" <debian-user@aphroland.org>]

Chris Owen said:
>   Hello again,
>
> I am trying to get a useable debian 3.0 installation going on an old
> Pentium laptop with 16MB RAM.  I have re-compiled my kernel to include
> only what I think are the essentials, and cut out most unnecessary
> background processes.  But even without running any useful programs, and
> without running X or anything, I find that free gives my physical memory
> usage at nearly 11MB:
>
> # free
>
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:         14876      10888       3988       7824        504       6448
> -/+ buffers/cache:       3936      10940
                                     ^^^^^
> Swap:        65516        584      64932

the carrots say it all. most of the ram is being allocated to disk cache,
which is normal. take my redhat box which has 1.5GB of ram:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1547752    1524184      23568          0     218000    1095224
-/+ buffers/cache:     210960    1336792
Swap:      2040244          0    2040244

about 1.3GB of it is allocated to cache.

the system will free the memory if/when it needs it for other things.

so no worries.

nate