Novice memory usage question

[franck routier <f.routier@wanadoo.fr>]

Hi,

I have added memory to my computer to up to 384 MB.

When I check memory usage on my system (Gnome information Panel or even cat
/proc/meminfo), I'm very surprised to see that ~350 MB are used, with X /
Gnome started + apache + exim + postgre's postmaster. Well, why not... but
what surprises me is that I formely had 128 MB (+128 MB swap partition),
and everything worked fine... (I added memory only to be able to run VMware
concurrently).

So my question is : can anyone explain me grossly how Linux uses memory ?
(ex "the more it finds, the more it eats" !)

Btw, I use unstable, maybe there's a bug somewhere not freing unsuded
memory...

Thanx in advance for any explaination.

Franck