Announcement

**Snowhog** · Mar 15, 2017, 01:17 PM

The amount of RAM in use is not a valid indicator of how well said RAM is being utilized. There is a (common) misconception that lower RAM usage is a 'good thing' and that higher RAM usage is a 'bad thing' when running Linux. Conventionally, in Linux, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

How well is your system running? Is it responsive? Those are questions that one should be paying attention to.

Oh, and not to forget: Welcome to Kubuntu Forums . Net.

**GreyGeek** · Mar 15, 2017, 03:10 PM

Like Mozart said, "There just as many notes as required, not one too many nor one too few". So it is with your RAM. Your system and apps will use what they need when they need it. IF you have a small amount of RAM then they'll treat SWAP as RAM and use it. IF you don't have a SWAP partition then your applications will be paged out and in as needed, which WILL run slower than if you used SWAP and much slower than if you had sufficient RAM.

Generally, each CPU on the CPU die has a "thread" which applications use while running. Eight core = eight threads, etc... Some Intel CPUs have hyper-threading which allows the OS to see twice as many logical cores (threads) as physical cores. Some applications create one thread (single threading) and some create more than one thread (multiple threading). Obviously, multi-threading applications usually run faster than single thread applications.
And, with multi-threading disabled some applications run faster, generally because the developer doesn't understand how to correctly utilize threads. CPU vendors often create proprietary thread technology, which restricts some coders ability to modify or manipulate the "thread of execution"

Linux uses the IEEE POSIX 1003.1c standard (1995). Implementations adhering to this standard are referred to as POSIX threads, or Pthreads. Most hardware vendors now offer Pthreads in addition to their proprietary thread API's.

Linux also has a "nice", a feature which lets the user determine the priority an application has in the execution cue. A process with a lower niceness value is given higher priority and more CPU time. A process with a higher niceness value (a "nicer" process) is given a lower priority and less CPU time, freeing up resources for processes which are more demanding. So, you can speed up some processes and slow down others, depending on YOUR priorities. After you open KSysguard list the processes and click on the CPU column head. That sorts the column according to the percentage of CPU time used. If you are not seeing percentages then click on the column head again. If you see a process that is taking up a lot of CPU time and slowing down what you are trying to do you can change its "niceness" by right clicking on it. Then click on "Set Priority" to get a GUI dialog which will let you adjust it.

**claydoh** · Mar 15, 2017, 08:52 PM

browser tabs are ram suckers, but as mentioned already, unused ram in Linux is wasted ram.

On my laptop, (Neon user edition ) with a number of programs running, including FF (2 tabs) and Chrome (5 tabs) for my typical usage:
(I don't know why I put 16gb in this laptop, other than I could and it was on sale, lol

Code:

jake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15925        2053       10778         297        3094       13155
Swap:          3999           0        3999

After closing FF:
j

Code:

ake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15925        1791       11074         267        3059       13446
Swap:          3999           0        3999

After closing Chrome:

Code:

jake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15925        1293       11682         170        2949       14044
Swap:          3999           0        3999

After closing Kontact:

Code:

jake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15925        1184       11840         122        2901       14203
Swap:          3999           0        3999

After closing irc client and other small apps

Code:

jake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15925        1110       11974         108        2841       14291
Swap:          3999           0        3999

I suspect not only browsers gobbling up more of the ram these days, but also the small background bits adding up to make a small but noticeable difference from 14.04, such as added and improved services, systemd, and the like

I often see my ram usage go down to the low 900 range even with a browser tabor two open.

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Using too much ram?

Using too much ram?

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