Don't Undestand Memory Stats

[eriknext]

Hi
Just installed Kabuntu 20.04 LTS as a dual boot on the harddrive. I went through the on- screen prompts and for the dual boot selected 50GB to allocate to Kabuntu.
All is good so far.

I don't quite understand the memory stats Kabuntu is showing:

I opened Dolphin and it shows: HOME: 31.5 GB free
That seems ok.


When I go to KInforCenter > Memory:
it shows the following:

Total physical memory: 3.2. Gib
Free physical memory: 723 Mib
Shared memory: 44 Mib
Disk Buffers: 35.9 Mib
Disk cache: 604 Mib

These numbers seems rather low. If I allocated 50GB to Kabuntu shouldn't they be higher?
I wonder am I running out of memory?

Thanks

[jlittle]

The 31.5 GB is storage, what you've called the "harddrive", the 3.2 GiB is RAM (random access memory).

[eriknext]

Ok thanks.

So these small numbers are not an issue?
Free physical memory: 723 Mib, Shared memory: 44 Mib, Disk Buffers: 35.9 Mib, Disk cache: 604 Mib

I followed the online menus for installation should I assume they are automatically created.

[eriknext]

Disregard - I opened 8 applications and the memory stats adjusted downwards, but still everything was running smoothly.
I suppose it depends on the RAM as you mentioned.

[Qqmike]

I didn't have time to study these, but they both look useful and explain some of these issues, apparent and "real":

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...-buffers-cache
https://community.fireeye.com/s/article/000002198

(My Google search string was: shared memory, disk buffers, disk cache. Lots of good things popped up.)

[eriknext]

Hey thanks. I did read those, the best line was:

You have 10 giga free RAM. If a monitoring system alerts you about that - fix the monitoring system.

Being new to Kabuntu I was more curious if was my computer - seeing how no one else has posted on this and the huge number of downloads, doesn't seem like a problem.
As John noted it's the RAM number that is key.

The system is fast even with 7 applications open. Thx

[claydoh]

This :
linuxatemyram.com

[eriknext]

Thanks, very interesting. (Someone actually registered a domain for this - must be a hot topic.)

I ran 'free -m' - I have 698Mib

From the link this point make it all clear:

To see how much ram your applications could use without swapping,

[claydoh]

Thanks, very interesting. (Someone actually registered a domain for this - must be a hot topic.)

It is an old topic ,
Memory usage is definitely different from Windows, and has been a common point of confusion for new users for as long as I can remember - the page has been around since at least 2009.

[eriknext]

Good to know. Yup, windows is different for sure. I was on another linux os for 2 years and first time with ubunutu, plus I just purchased a used laptop so was wondering if it might have been my computer. Thanks.

[verndog]

I also use

vmstat -s

to check ram usage.