memory usage

English Hardware
#1

Hi,

I have observed strange memory usage reports on my amd64 opensuse 11.1 with 4G onboard. Using “top” and “free -m” commands I could see that my memory was almost fully used. Also as per “ps aux” output I got imagination that the commands above are right.
But the same time KDE “hardware monitor” showed me that only 50% was in use.

What shell I trust?

#2

Linux caches and buffers as much memory as possible so that it can start up things faster. Keep in mind that empty memory is useless. ‘free’ also includes cached/buffered memory and that’s why you see it as full