[KLUG Members] Memory problems

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>First off before my question, I am running redhat 7.2 on P3 800mHz, 256
>MB of ram on my laptop. Now, when i got into the memory information program it
>only says i have 223.31 megs of ram, 

Your video card is consuming 32Mb?  Lots of cheap video chipssets simply use
main memory.

>and that i only have 4.51 megs free. 

What would you want free memory for?  Free memory is wasted.  Do a "free -t"

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        517260     512028       5232     149724      52232     362952
-/+ buffers/cache:      96844     420416
Swap:       255992          0     255992
Total:      773252     512028     261224

Perfectly normal.  420Mb is being used to cache I/O,  which is all good.  If
processes need this memory it will be stolen from the cache heap,  this is
normal UNIX behavior.  So long as swap used = ~0 (or simply isn't growing)
you've got plenty of RAM.

>This doesnt seem normal to me.  

Yes,  this is heard alot on Usenet groups.  But it *IS* normal, AND good.

>Second, whenever i try to play a game such as Tux
>racer, or any other graphic heavy game, it is SOOOOO slow..  i have to
>kill the process to get it to exit.  Any suggestions?

Possibly a MESA/OpenGL/X-server issue.  I don't know anything about any of
those.


Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505