3GB less RAM usage after today's update

Support
1

I mean, that’s a good thing, right?
I am using Manjaro stable and got the latest update today (Feb 4th). Before the update I had 7GB of RAM usage (out of 16GB) and today it’s only 4.2GB with the same apps open.

What happened?

2

Some program had a memory leak which got fixed with a new version.

5 Likes
3

Seems likely.

4
  • One of the apps has been optimized?
  • You have lesser tabs open in Firefox (any browser)?
  • One of the apps got a bugfix (perhaps)?
  • You never restart your computer?
    • this is normal if you are that kind of user
    • memory usage will build-up (cache) which will reset after a restart
3 Likes
5

Please, I’m not a beginner.
If it isn’t some very obvious change in the kernel or KDE, which you would have answered, then this must have been some kind of major memory leak in an app. Would really like to know which one, though.
Thank you.

6

Forgive my boldness. But nobody said you were a beginner, in fact if you were a longer forum user you would have posted more relevant information,
hardware type, logs, an htop or bashtop output. It takes ingredients to make a cake.

Well, you are actually almost the only one who has noticed this because on my system and according to the forum they have not mentioned this problem regularly with the latest update. Including me, so it may be related to internal hardware or something with the package. That’s why the questions from others that fit in about this.

:kangaroo:

2 Likes
7

It seems logical - but it is still a non sequitur.
(it’s not the only possible explanation)

No one knows what the reason was - and without scrutinizing the logs, which may still exist, there can be nothing but conjecture and guesses.

And even with them there might still not be a definitive answer.

1 Like
8

I moved the topic to Support as it is more a support question than anything else.

If your system uses lesser memory than before the update - the most plausible reason is filesystem cache which got reset when you restarted the system after the update.

Without further information - detailed - it is impossible point to one specific reason why your system uses less memory than usual.

2 Likes
9

One can tell the system to drop the cache at runtime as well. :wink: :point_down:

su -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"

On my system, I’ve made it into an alias. :point_down:

alias dropcache='su -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"'
5 Likes