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AntonioCS
Asked: 2013-12-14 02:27:58 +0800 CST

Xubuntu excessive memory consumption

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$ free -m
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7917       7011        906          0        124        609
-/+ buffers/cache:       6276       1640
Swap:         8122       3770       4352

I have Xubuntu running on an HP EliteBook i5 with 8 GB of RAM.

$ uname -a 
Linux HP-EliteBook-8470p 3.5.0-37-generic #58~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 10
17:48:11 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Normally I have to run Vagrant (VirtualBox), Firefox (15 to 20 tabs) and NetBeans. Vagrant normally takes 1 GB, Firefox almost takes on 1 GB and it's the same for NetBeans.

This still doesn't explain why my free memory is so low. I open htop and I see multiple instances of X.

Anyone know what the problem might be?

xubuntu

1 Answers

  1. Quite possibly one of the apps (perhaps Firefox or Flash) gradually leak memory. I have a very similar issue with long Opera sessions. I found that the best way to deal with this is to reboot often enough (basically, whenever the system starts swapping).

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