What would be a normal memory load on a fresh install?

[lelamal]

Hi everyone, I have a question that is bugging me regarding memory usage in Kubuntu. I have used Ubuntu for over 1 year, where I don't remember seeing such numbers, so now I don't know how to interpret them on KDE. So as an example, taking System Monitor as a reference, Xorg builds up during the first hour after login or so, and for the rest of the day stabilizes at around 250M (I do have kwin effects running). More examples: running Amarok uses about 120M, Konqueror 106M, Kontact 80M, and so on.

What concerns me most, however, is the overall memory value, which throughout the day stays at around 1.2 GiB. Since I have 2.0 GiB of RAM, I generally don't care much (except when I need VirtualBox, perhaps), above all because it doesn't keep growing endlessly. But I still wonder: are such numbers normal? Is it common to most Kubuntu users, or is there something definitely wrong which I should investigate? I ask this because I've read that the minimum requirement for installing Kubuntu is 512M, so either this number is overly generous, or my system has something seriously wrong. Many thanks for any help!

[Snowhog]

Re: What would be a normal memory load on a fresh install?

In Linux, unused memory is wasted memory. It's a different mind-set and approach than what Windows uses. That you see a lot of your memory being used is not a thing for concern. Do you see any lagginess in your system? Does it run as you expect?

[lelamal]

Re: What would be a normal memory load on a fresh install?

In Linux, unused memory is wasted memory. It's a different mind-set and approach than what Windows uses. That you see a lot of your memory being used is not a thing for concern.

Hi Snowhog, thanks for replying. As I said, however, when I used Ubuntu with the same and, sometimes, many other applications (that is, native applications for the same purposes), I never even reached 1 GiB RAM. Normal values would have been around 800M perhaps, and I went past that limit only when I run VirtualBox, for obvious reasons. So my concern is not on a comparison with Windows, for it was still Linux I used on Ubuntu.

Do you see any lagginess in your system? Does it run as you expect?

Actually, my system runs as perfectly as I expect. Nothing is wrong, really. I've switched to Kubuntu when the RC was out, so I soon noticed this difference in System Monitor. Ever since I wanted to ask about it, and what triggered my post today was an exchange on this blog http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i...muk-right.html, where a commenter said he was greatly disappointed in finding that Kubuntu 9.10 on an old machine with 512MB of RAM is hardly usable, and the blogger answered that if that's the case then there's something very, very wrong with Kubuntu 9.10. This rang a bell, I thought my values may indeed be too high then, and since I'm quite new to Kubuntu, I still need to hear from others what values do they find on their machine, and if mine can be safely considered normal.

[Snowhog]

Re: What would be a normal memory load on a fresh install?

Just keep an eye on it. If you begin to see any kind of degredation to performance, let us know. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it.

[francoisbuntu]

Re: What would be a normal memory load on a fresh install?

I had problems with nepomuk or virtuoso hogging resources (memory and cpu) after a fresh install.
Initially I killed the process but I ended up disactivating nepomuk in the system settings.
I didn't really understand how to take advantage of nepomuk anyway.