Score:1

My RAM is recognized but system doesn't use all of it

mw flag

I've installed 16GB of RAM on my computer. It seems to have issue in free memory and used memory. Please see the picture below.

cropped screenshot of terminal showing RAM usage

in flag
`2.8Gi` + `11Gi` = `13.8Gi`. There's a total of `15Gi` installed and `1.1Gi` is free. I would say this is a rounding error of a few dozen megabytes
Konics avatar
mw flag
any suggestions or recommendation to maximize my RAM ?
Konics avatar
mw flag
meaning im using 2.8Gi + 1.1Gi RAM only ?
Konics avatar
mw flag
ohh the system is just borrowing unused memory for disk caching right ? And its 11Gi for caching
Score:1
id flag

The output of free isn't completely intuitive.

Total memory is straightforward: it's the spec of your machine.

'Used' memory is memory that is currently in use (eg by open programs) and can't (easily) be freed up, ie it can't be freed up without closing applications or affecting performance.

'Free' memory is memory that is currently not being used at all; some people think of this as 'wasted memory'.

'Available' memory is memory that is being used, but that can be freed up if the system needs it, without affecting performance. The OS uses it for disk caching for example - so overall the system runs faster than if it had to write this data to disk. Even with an SSD, RAM is faster than the disk.

Human instinct is to think that having a lot of 'Free' memory is a good thing, but it's memory that is being wasted by the system because it's not being used at all (to make it run faster by reducing disk writes). Better to use all the resources available to maximise performance, and reallocate memory to an application if it needs it.

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