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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Abnormally high ram usage on idle (NixOS) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My computer over the last week has (after using the computer for a few hours) shown very high ram usage, around 50 - 60% out of 32GB, even though nothing in htop appears to be the culprit with the highest consumer being Firefox at 1.6% ram, even in a tty, around half of my ram is being used up even though no process shows over 0.1% ram. Rebooting does seem to work, but I'd prefer not to every few hours. Do you think it might be an issue with hardware? I did build my pc so perhaps something's broken?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's probably buffer/cache.

https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hate that this is the default answer to these questions, most tools by which less tech savy have detrmined that something is using a lot of ram are accounting for buffers and don't subtract it from the free space. Every time when I clicked on someones post (well on Reddit, here its the first one) regarding their ram usage being high and this website was posted, it was not the buffer/cache. So while it is obviosly important to get to know how OP determined that something was using a lot of ram, directly assuming that they read it wrong is imo simply not helpful and in most cases just more confusing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're right. In this comment they specified that games crash when the RAM fills, so it most probably isn't just buffer/cache.

I assumed that it was buffer/cache since they mentioned that it doesn't show any process using that much RAM. Next time I'll ask if the high RAM usage has any negative effect, to make sure.