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I found memory usage is so high.
And i checked it via top command, only 66664k free, my computer's total memory is 12GB.
I checked all processes via system monitor software, found all processes cost about 200MB memory.

  1. Why does top command say only 60kb memory is free?

  2. Sometimes, i found some processes cost memory about 10TB and they free the memory at once. anybody tell me? thanks.

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    If you Google this, you'll find about a million hits as to how Linux uses memory.
    – Nikos C.
    Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 9:38
  • Unused memory is pretty much wasted. Preloading, Caching etc. will use RAM while other processes don´t.
    – Th 00 mÄ s
    Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 11:46

2 Answers 2

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The short answer is — cache. Don't worry too much, used memory means it's not just collecting dust. It still can be used for other purposes, though.

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    but my workstation is so slow that i have to restart it.
    – ken
    Commented Nov 30, 2012 at 6:25
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Have you tried with htop?

To install on a Debian-based system:
apt-get install htop

Legend:
1. Green = Used Memory
2. Blue = Buffers
3. Yellow = Cache

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    +1 for bringing htop to my attention. It's pretty sweet!
    – Ian Atkin
    Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 21:00

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