Comment Re:Do you actually use them day today though? (Score 1) 105
Here:
Those dudes probably don't know how to make the difference between file cache and memory usage. All computers including those using Linux will use ALL their memory for file caching e.g. caching the content of files into memory.
Here is an example:
free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.8Gi 617Mi 586Mi 53Mi 6.6Gi 6.8Gi
Swap: 15Gi 66Mi 15Gi
This computer has 8GB of memory, ~586MB of free memory, and ~6.8GB of available memory because it uses the spare ~6.6 GB for file caching, all OSes do that. That memory used for file caching is available instantly for the OS at anytime and must be excluded from the memory the OS uses. All spare memory will eventually go to file caching. Again all OSes work like that.
So 8GB ram 586MB free and 617MB used by the OS and running programs so 6.8GB available
So you need to be able to tell the difference between free memory (you shouldn't have any or very little if your OS works correctly) and *available* memory. That memory used for file caching is avaiable on demand at any time for the OS and running programs
Also don't look at "virtual memory" used you need to look at "resident memory"
Example:
On the same host as above:
1004 mysql 20 0 1759176 355056 7560 S 0.0 4.4 61:13.76 mysqld
mysqld uses 1.7 GB of virtual memory but only 355MB of resident memory. That 1.7GB of virtual memory doesn't really matter. All OSes including Windows work the same way although they often name thing differently. You need to know how to interpret what you see...