RAM claimback seems to fail

Hi all,
Eight Gb, by today’s standards perhaps not a lot…
Anyway. I tesed on two kernels. Here is what I found…
5.10 : memory use is…pretty high.
4.19 : a bit more efficient.
In both cases (right after login) I start at about 80-isch procent.
I do what I do (firefox with 20 tabs, varying) and some music in the background (different media players amongst VLC and SMPlayer and Eliza). Obviously, memory use climbs.
I have left the computer on with nothing but nmon and top running in their console (in KDE, so Konsole, in fact). There are three of those open, and XSensors.
Memory use sticks at about 44%, even though nothing else runs. Top registers 0.05% average activity, so…“sunday chill” mode… :wink:
Is there a mechanism I miss to reclaim the memory?
Thanks
Melissa
Edit : I went “accountant” on the system and ran “Free” in (yes…another Konsole) and saw 72% as available yet (indeed, what Nmon reports) 30.8% as free…I think I’m getting the picture here. More due since swap is simply not touched…seems like I’m not running in overdrive, then :grin:

What for? Memory is there to be used…
Linux uses memory for caching (buff/cache column in free) which will be reduced when a program does actually need more memory than currently is free/unused.

As always on memory topics: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

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Thanks! :hugs:
That is why I left the system running overnight (well, nothing “ran” safe for nmon and top) to see what would happen…
Thanks for meditating with me
Melissa

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