Ram Question

[Pete]

On Friday 16 January 2004 18:46, J. Erik Hemdal wrote:
> >I installed Fedora Core on my PC at home and it is using almost all
> > of>.the
>
> Ram that my PC
>
> >has (using about 240mb of 256mb).  I have tried
> >selecting all packages and I have also tried doing the default Desktop
> >install but both end up taking almost all of my ram when the PC is doing
> >nothing.  I have installed other Linux distros and they only took around
> >96MB when running KDE idle. =20
> >=20
> >Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can free up some RAM?
> >=20
>
> I would examine what's running with redhat-config-services and see what I
> could turn off.  You likely are running a variety of daemons by default
> that you don't use.  For example, if you have an ACPI machine, you do not
> need apmd.  You don't need sendmail unless you run a mail server.  There
> are several others that slip my mind now that you may be able to do
> without. The GUI tool gives a short explanation of the services so you can
> understand what they do.
>
> Erik

If you are using free to view memory usage, the note that top used/free 
numbers are not the best means for determining actually used memory.

		total		used		free		shared	buffers	cached
Mem:	508116	485048	23068	0		69688	193184
-/+ buffers/cache:	222176	285940
Swap:	522072	3492		518580


The numbers you should look at are the -/+ buffers number. That's how much 
free memory you really have. The used number includes memory the kernel has 
reserved for filesystem and network buffer space. Those buffers can quickly 
be given up for application space if need be, so the free number is sorta 
in-accurate. You can still deactivate some of the default daemons that start, 
but even with only 256 MB of RAM, you are probably ok.
-- 
What do you get for the individual who has everything? Might I suggest a 
gravestone marked "So what?"
--
Pete