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I also don't understand why every chat app needs 1GB of RAM to itself.
every chat app needs over a gig of ram to itself for "developer productivity"
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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I got surprised like two days ago when I got a desktop notification that Linux kernel killed a process, because there was no memory available, or something like that. I didn't know it can do that, lol.
Pretty useful for not getting locked out. It can be finetuned if you want to assign priorities and that.
It is usually handled by systemd-oomd.
Many people who don't know what they're talking about in this thread. No, used memory does not include cached memory. You can confirm this trivially by running free -m and adding up the numbers (used + cached + free = total). Used memory can not be reclaimed until the process holding it frees it or dies. Not all cached memory can be reclaimed either, which is why the kernel reports an estimate of available memory. That's the number that really matters, because aside from some edges cases that's the number that determines whether you're out of memory or not.
Anyway the fact that you can't run Linux with 16GB is weird and indicates that some software you are using has a RAM leak (a Firefox extension perhaps?). Firefox will use memory if it's there but it's designed to cope with low memory as well, it just unloads tabs quicker so you have to reload often. There are also extensions that make tab unloading more aggressive, maybe that would help - especially if there's memory pressure from other processes too.
Yeah the cache as part of used memory theory didn't stack up. This comment (sorry, Lemmy probably doesn't handle the link well) showed 54GB in use, 30GB cached, and 13GB available. 54+12 = 67GB total so cached doesn't seem to be counted as in use since it should be counted as free (mostly).
In the end, I'm pretty sure it's a memory hog website. It kept filling up until GNOME crashed and I lost my progress (I was trying to order prints for 1000 photos on a horrible website that made me change settings one photo at a time, and the longer I took the more RAM filled up).
Anyway the fact that you canβt run Linux with 16GB is weird
I mean, it runs fine. It's more how I'm using it. Firefox 4GB, Element 1GB, Signal 1GB, Beeper 1GB, Steam 2GB, Joplin 1GB. That's all just open and idle (chats and Steam don't even have windows, just background) and are the minimum I would have open at any point. That's already 10GB. By the time I open a couple of windows in a Jetbrains IDE or a particularly demanding website and suddenly it's suffocating.
I have a memory consumption issue with Ubuntu, because I stupidly set up the system to have 0 swap. This means under high memory pressure, the entire system could suddenly crash.
To be fair, Windows isn't a shining beacon either because whenever I attempt something very GPU intensive like running local LLMs the GPU overheats in a split second before the fans have time to spin up and the entire system shuts down.
Just enable zram. It's super easy to set up too.
How do I do that?
How does that happen? Shouldn't the GPU and CPU have thermal throttling so even under intense loads it just slows down to keep temps down?
When I play games on my laptop the integrated graphics are at 100% most of the time but it doesn't cause the system to crash.
So the system is a gaming laptop which might explain things. The CPU has liquid metal for cooling and a lower TDP so it's fine. Whereas the GPU has a higher TGP and if ran hard draws like 120W. If the GPU fans are not already on this quickly overwhelming the GPU thermally.
Weird. If I was going to saturate my GPU, I'd pick an intensive game. Seems odd that a gaming laptop might get overwhelmed and shut off if a game is too intensive? Or is is something special about LLMs that make it the Archilles' heel?
18gb is nothing, my Firefox regularly eats 70gb (30gb is the normal load I see after browser restart) 
Browser restart means without any tabs? If so that is some concern
I don't know if this is something to brag about, it seems more like something isn't working right...
How do you do this? I usually have about 2k open tabs and my firefox uses a fraction of that.
What are you doing to poor Firefox?
Firefox with an inflation fetish
Wait, everyone is saying cached is part of the used memory but yours shows more cached than in use?
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/proc_meminfo.5.html
Cached %lu
In-memory cache for files read from the disk (the page cache). Doesn't include SwapCached.
Cached should be memory stored on HDD and not RAM.
Ah so cached is the disk cache and it sounds like this is not part of the "used" memory.
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