How to reduce cached memory?

[Kyle McMartin]

On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 11:57:41PM +0100, Joshua C. wrote:
> I have kde 4.2 and f9. After 2+ hours on my computer it has about
> 1,4GB cached memory. I don't see him releasing this memory after time.
> I know it comes from the apps being open but it seems the kernel
> "never" releases the memory after the app terminates. How to make the
> kernel free this memory? I've seen similar cases with kde 3.5.10 and
> f8 and f7. I know kde eats memory but this is too much. Who caches so
> much of it? Why?
> 
> The mashine has 2,6 GB RAM (still x86) and 512mb swap which is rarely
> used (~ 50mb at most) and combined cached + app memory totals about 2
> gb.
> 

"cached" means exactly that. It's memory used to cache virtual
memory pages that have been read in from disk, or have been modified
and written back out, open files you've read, executable code from
programs, etc.

If you're not swapping, and you still have memory free, then that's a
win. There's no harm in it.

regards, Kyle