I dont know if this is the correct thread location, please redirect if I am wrong…
I have always complained about the amount of RAM MS uses just at idle, but on a whim I decided to look over my box after installing another gig of ram. I am using 1.2Gb of RAM just sitting on a OpenSuSE 11.1 64 bit system.
System Spec’s
AMD 64 bit dual core 4200+
2GB RAM 1x1GB & 2x512MB set in single channel mode at 64bit @ 333 DDR
(I was running 1GB with 2x512MB dual channel 128bit @ 333 DDR)
SATA Baracuda 200GB HD
Now after turning off vmware from starting during boot (in both cases no VM Machines running) and a reboot of my 11.1 64bit machine I am now using 750MB and just under 400MB in Application. Even still, when I boot to 10.3 32bit, I sit at 512MB with just under 300MB in Application usage.
Whats going on? I dont expect my primary machine to beable to run on 64MB of ram, but the 11.1 system seems kinda bloated.
Is this to be expected?
Are there any good doc’s to fine tune my system of un-needed services?
Will 11.2 change for the better/worst?
Should I consider going back to 32bit OS? My 64bit system has done everything I needed it too do.
The only reason this came up, my wife needs a windows machine to proof read her school work before sending it. And when it looks proper in OpenOffice, Opened in MS Office, the format is messed up. Which is why I needed a VM. But with only 1GB ram, my box slowed down too much.
On 11/25/2009 12:06 AM, Johnfm3 wrote:
>
> Whats going on? I dont expect my primary machine to beable to run on
> 64MB of ram, but the 11.1 system seems kinda bloated.
>
> Is this to be expected?
yes. i think that was “normal” for 64bit system. [1].
> Are there any good doc’s to fine tune my system of un-needed services?
i will not do that, unless you are an advanced user.
my suggestion is, if you were really need more memory for running VM,
try upgrading your RAM,
try more lightweight desktop environment, i.e. instead of using KDE-4.
try another DE like GNOME, XFCE, or LXDE.
try another VM. I never compared VM running on VMWare vs VirtualBox,
but last time i checked, running W2000AS/XP on VirtualBox on my laptop
(AMD Turion64 X2 1.8 Gz on 2 GB RAM and running openSUSE 11.1 64 bit) it
was run normal. The Windows VM was installed and running Oracle database.
> Will 11.2 change for the better/worst?
AFAIK, it is same.
> The only reason this came up, my wife needs a windows machine to proof
> read her school work before sending it. And when it looks proper in
> OpenOffice, Opened in MS Office, the format is messed up. Which is
> why I needed a VM. But with only 1GB ram, my box slowed down too
> much.
yeah, been there done that :). My solution at that time was by
converting it to PDF from OpenOffice, and send it as is.
Linux by its nature will use the vast majority of the ram you supply to it. It does this before touch the swap partition, which makes everything run faster.
Above you will see my memory usage, my system load, and my list of services and how they are run. I forgot to mention, that all of these services are default except for apache2 and ntp.
My computer is bored.
No matter what operating system you install, always make sure to have at least double what the minimum (or even better double the recommended) installed.
You want Linux using your RAM – it does it very well.
ShuLHan: I dont think Iam a Advanced User, but I do feel I am a Power User. Been using SuSE since 6.4, and with a lot of help from suse am setup with a nice enviroment using LDAP Auth, SQUID, DNS, and much more. I will try your suggestion of looking at other desktops and seeing if I can release more resources. But lets face it, general computer user wants eye candy and ease of use. Special effects and Intergration of primay apps which use ram are going to be what Users follow. I did like your pdf idea, my wife’s teacher wont accept it. She is not even the level of computer users. So we need to keep to the KISS method (Keep It Simple & Stupid).
wshawn;
Thanks for taking the time showing me your system resources. Yours looks likes mine, using almost 2GB just sitting. If I had the cash to throw ram at it, I would do it in a heart beat. I would be happy with 4GB. I agree that I want Linux using ram and that it does it very well. But I was using SWAP due to no ram left. And with the demands of my system, it becomes slow and unusable real fast. And if your married, you know the saying “Happy Wife, Happy Life”.
There is some more overhead with 64bit apps/OS(Larger registers bigger binary how I understand it) I believe that kde4 isn’t too bad in its base footprint.
Now as I use a lightweight DE/WM not really like for like but I have no problem with 2gb and several VM’s in fact in trying to swap out I had several running and seemed to have disk I/O or cpu usage problems rather than ram but… I do tend to be quite conservative on ram allocation in the vm’s you’ve made no mention of how much.
I’ve got 584mb as the largest but have to admit I don’t really test my VM’s they are more troubleshooting or experiments rather than used. As mentioned though alternative distro and lightweight DE though, my footprint is only ~400mb.
In fact I’m able to run a clean install of Windows XP + MS Office in VirtualBox with 192 MB of RAM assigned to the VM. Just keep a snapshot of the clean state and don’t let it be bloated down if all you need is to proof read documents using Word.
The rest of the system shouldn’t consume that much RAM. But since RAM are so cheap these days, you can try to upgrade it if it’s economically viable.