It runs basically the same applications, KDE4, Opera, Icedove, Krusader, a few Konsoles, a few Okulars, one headless Virtualbox session, (the other session was put to SaveState)
I am not sure what to tell you. Obviously something is running, on this session it is reporting over 3gb used. This is not cache ram being used.
So is this system loaded as well? 4 GB of RAM? How much to I need to keep processes in memory on a normal desktop? 8 GB, 16GB, 1 TB?
You need as much as you need. To be quite honest before I saw the output of top I assumed this was a bug. Instead it seems the memory is actually being used by running applications.
Question remains (I am repeating myself again): if no process uses RAM now, why does the kernel insist of keeping non-accessed memory in RAM, and swaps actively used process RAM?
Did you try what I suggested and run a lighter session like fluxbox for 10 minutes or so and see if the ram inflates?
When I studied how an OS was built back in the 1980-ies, there used to be some algorithm behind page swapping. Usually it was least used memory which was swapped out first. When it was not re-needed it stayed in the swap space. But this question is already past the point why a normal desktop needs > 4 GB.
There is an algorithm for page swapping and a lot of parameters to tweak.
I know I sound a bit harried now, but I feel a bit put off by a simple statement "your system is loaded, 1 GB RAM is insufficient, what else dya expect?" Be assured that it is nothing personal.
That is not what I said. I am just stating facts.
From the output of top, only just the process of xorg virtualbox and opera are using 39.4% of your memory.
The only solution is to use less programs, but I am unsure why you seem to be using so much memory though. I have evolution, pidgin, firefox 7, rhythmbox, nautilus, battle for wesnoth, and gcalctool open, on Gnome 2.30 64-bit and I am using:
Code: Select all
kazuma@debian-ghibli:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2983 2268 715 0 106 1145
-/+ buffers/cache: 1016 1966
Swap: 2859 0 2859
So if your system's applications do not add up to that amount of usage of your memory then it might be a bug. Perhaps upload a screenshot of the kde system monitor list of processes sorted by memory? I will help you figure this out, it is not normal for a Debian system to be slow