My RAM gets higher and higer

[Bernouilli]

Hello,

In the first hour that I boot linux, i notice that my physical used RAM is up to 185MB.
But after some hours i noticed that my ram is up to 360MB. So i close all the program, and saw
that my ram is still like 340MB. Why isn't it back to +- 185MB? Do I sometimes have to run a garbadge collector or something like that?

P.S. 185MB at the beginning is that, high;low; or normal for linux (fedora 11)

Thanks

[bigtomrodney]

Memory doesn't work the same way in Linux or Unix-like systems as it does in Windows. It is considered a bad thing to have memory sitting unused so while it is "free" it is used for application caching. A well configured system should use 85-90% of RAM under normal usage. Cache will be freed as required by "real" needs.

Interestingly since Vista, Microsoft now take this approach also, which is why some people incorrectly say that Vista memory requirements are very high. It is simply a misunderstanding on how memory is managed.

[vickey_20]

where did u see the memory usage ?

[devils casper]

Execute top and free commands to check memory usage.
htop is bit better than top command but its not pre-installed in most of distros. Install htop using package manager of your distro and execute htop command in Terminal.

[vickey_20]

do these command read the file /proc/meminfo and /proc/cpuinfo

[Bernouilli]

Ok thanks for summary of ram use in linux/unix.
I saw my ram space in a gui programe of gnome. It is called system monitor.

[Bernouilli]

Hey I downloaded the htop command, nice tool.