Top all-time · #1803
Help! Linux ate my RAM!
Personal blog · linuxatemyram.comsystems
Help! Linux ate my RAM! is a personal blog at linuxatemyram.com about systems. Since 2010, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 47 times, most often “Linux Ate My RAM”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Linux Ate My RAM19 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2018-01-15
- Linux ate my RAM 12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2010-02-20
- Experiments and fun with the Linux disk cache (about free -m and file caches)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-02-01
- Linux ate my RAM3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-04-09
- Linux Ate My RAM2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-18
- Linux ate my RAM2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-08-23
What Hacker News says?
> 38G are in used caching things for applications The 38G isn't "cached app memory" (there is no such thing), it's actual resident memory, calculated as the sum of the second column. The same as "RES" in Linux. There is no memory cache that differentiates apps from non-apps (whatever that is?), there is just regular file memory cache, which is labelled below the application memory section, shown to be using 13G. Eve…
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on “Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro”Submitted Linux ate my RAM as a story · 194 points
HN discussionIt's not exactly wsl is it? Linux considers free memory useless and uses it as cache. https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ Weird that i didn't knew this. Couple of years ago i wasted some time to get more "free" memory on my server. Lol
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on “Initial preview of GUI app support for the Windows Subsystem for Linux”Submitted Tired of explaining Linux's seemingly obtuse memory usage to confused newbies? as a story · 155 points
HN discussion>Every OS does it, let your OS manage RAM. Unlike linux[1], windows task manager correctly shows "cached" ram as "free" ram. Therefore it's highly unlikely that the memory usage is from the OS caching mechanism. As for the actual behavior of using free ram, what happens if there are two apps that try to use the same behavior? ie. you have windows defender and a DBMS installed, both of them try to use up all the free…
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on “Windows Defender is enough, if you harden it”Submitted Help, Linux ate my RAM as a story · 102 points
HN discussionHaving lots of memory can serve as a poor-man's SSD. At least on a Linux system files are read from the disk and left in memory until that memory is needed for something else. This can increase responsiveness by reducing the need to go to disk for frequently used filesystem data. More info: http://www.linuxatemyram.com/index.html
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on “Why GNU grep is Fast”Submitted Linux Ate My RAM as a story · 97 points
HN discussionAssuming you are using Linux and you have gobs of RAM, the 15-20% difference you will see between an mSATA SSD and NVMe is negligible for most common workloads/applications, as you will be likely pulling things from the RAM cache. The Linux box I'm writing this on only has 8 GB RAM and my whole system is only using 1.1G, leaving 6+ GB RAM as a RAM cache for read files. On 16 GB systems it's even better. For more inf…
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on “Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux”Submitted Linuxatemyram.com as a story · 44 points
HN discussionhttp://www.linuxatemyram.com/
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on “Ubuntu Releases 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin”Submitted Linux ate my RAM (2009) as a story · 26 points
HN discussionhttps://www.linuxatemyram.com/
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on “Why Discord Is Sticking with React Native”Submitted Linux Ate My RAM as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://www.linuxatemyram.com/ is one of my favorite single-serving sites.
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on “ZFS fans, rejoice – RAIDz expansion will be a thing soon”Submitted Experiments and fun with the Linux disk cache as a story · 4 points
HN discussionJust linking for anyone wondering. http://www.linuxatemyram.com
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on “Show HN: Linux server monitoring web dashboard”Submitted Linux ate my RAM as a story · 4 points
HN discussion>The OS uses the ram as this makes running tasks faster. No point in keeping it free. this meme[1] needs to die. windows, mac, and linux (htop) all correctly differentiate between "used but used for cache" RAM and "used for application" RAM. When people are talking about not having enough free ram, they're talking about chrome, spotify, and slack taking up 2GB each, not the output of "free" showing only 8MB free. [1…
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on “There’s no place for expensive laptops with 8GB of RAM anymore”Submitted Linux ate my RAM as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe article mentions this on the second page at the bottom: http://www.linuxatemyram.com/play.html
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on “Tired of explaining Linux's seemingly obtuse memory usage to confused newbies?”Submitted Linux Ate My RAM as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI run KDE, Firefox, Slack (browser based app), Chromium, VS Code (browser based app) (plus Gvim, shell etc) on Arch and it's currently steady at 3.9 GB (of 16) Edit: Also be sure it's actually used: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
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on “In defence of swap: common misconceptions”Submitted Linux Ate My RAM as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHence, https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
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on “How memory maps (mmap) deliver faster file access in Go”Submitted LinuxAteMyRam.com as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttp://www.linuxatemyram.com explains it.
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on “Ubuntu low-memory install for VMs”Submitted Linux ate my RAM as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAgreed. Compare that with http://www.linuxatemyram.com/
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on “The Move from Linux to FreeBSD”Submitted Help Linux ate my RAM as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
