KDE - Desktop environment has become slow. RAM is 90+% Utilized at the start up

Hi all,

My laptop is very slow now a days. When I see the system information > Memory it is showing that the ram is utilized up to 97%. Could someone please help me to solve this problem? Because of this high utilization my laptop is hanging very much, now and then.

Output of uname -r

$ uname -r
5.7.15-1-MANJARO

My RAM’s capacity is 4GiB.

Thanks

You make this sound like it is not a new installation?

Since you are viewing processes … what is using the RAM ?

(PS - another way to check: sudo ps_mem)

Output from inxi -Fazy

   $ inxi -Fazy
System:
  Kernel: 5.7.15-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.7-x86_64 
  root=UUID=e4e5b686-9bb6-4b8c-a0b5-98cf00dbd45c rw quiet apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3 
  Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.19.4 tk: Qt 5.15.0 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion g6 Notebook PC 
  v: 0792100000205610000610100 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 
  serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 183E v: 56.32 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde 
  v: F.25 date: 05/29/2013 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 24.2 Wh condition: 25.9/25.9 Wh (100%) volts: 12.5/10.8 
  model: Hewlett-Packard Primary type: Li-ion serial: N/A status: Charging 
CPU:
  Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-3210M bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Ivy Bridge family: 6 model-id: 3A (58) stepping: 9 microcode: 21 
  L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
  flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 bogomips: 19960 
  Speed: 1208 MHz min/max: 1200/3100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1223 2: 1213 
  3: 1198 4: 1199 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Vulnerable 
  Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds status: Vulnerable: No microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0166 
  Device-2: AMD Thames [Radeon HD 7500M/7600M Series] vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: radeon v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:6840 
  Device-3: Cheng Uei Precision Industry (Foxlink) type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
  bus ID: 2-1.5:3 chip ID: 05c8:0222 serial: <filter> 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: intel,radeon 
  FAILED: ati unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa display ID: :0 
  screens: 1 
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.2x8.0") 
  s-diag: 414mm (16.3") 
  Monitor-1: LVDS1 res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 102 size: 340x190mm (13.4x7.5") 
  diag: 389mm (15.3") 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB GT2) 
  v: 4.2 Mesa 20.1.5 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
  chip ID: 8086:1e20 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.7.15-1-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Ralink RT5390 [802.11 b/g/n 1T1R G-band PCI Express Single Chip] 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: rt2800pci v: 2.3.0 port: 4000 
  bus ID: 07:00.0 chip ID: 1814:539f 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 08:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8136 
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-3: Ralink type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 1-1.3:3 chip ID: 148f:2000 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 105.40 GiB (22.6%) 
  SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST500LM030-2E717D size: 465.76 GiB 
  block size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s 
  rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: SDM1 scheme: MBR 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw size: 264.59 GiB size: 259.43 GiB (98.05%) 
  used: 105.40 GiB (40.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4 
Swap:
  Alert: No Swap data was found. 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 50 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 203 Uptime: 43m Memory: 3.74 GiB used: 1.68 GiB (44.9%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 Compilers: gcc: 10.1.0 clang: 10.0.1 Packages: 
  pacman: 1554 lib: 408 flatpak: 0 Shell: Bash v: 5.0.18 running in: yakuake 
  inxi: 3.1.05 

Output from HTOP process viewer



  1  [||||||||                                15.6%]   Tasks: 106, 453 thr; 1 running
  2  [|||||||                                 13.4%]   Load average: 0.59 0.57 0.82 
  3  [|||||||                                 14.0%]   Uptime: 00:42:20
  4  [|||||||||                               17.0%]
  Mem[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||1.55G/3.74G]
  Swp[                                        0K/0K]

    PID USER      PRI  NI  VIRT   RES   SHR S CPU% MEM%   TIME+  Command
   1167 falcon     20   0 3166M  113M 77120 D 10.2  3.0  1:25.37 /usr/bin/kwin_x11
    757 root       20   0  992M  129M 99624 S  7.0  3.4  1:29.17 /usr/lib/Xorg -nolisten tcp -auth /var/run/sd
   1200 falcon     20   0 2890M  228M  114M S  6.3  6.0  0:36.11 /usr/bin/plasmashell
   1829 falcon     20   0 3688M  420M  155M S  5.1 11.0  6:05.94 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox --private-window
   5606 falcon     20   0  960M 82984 67440 D  4.4  2.1  0:03.27 /usr/bin/konsole -qwindowtitle Htop -qwindowi
   4551 falcon     20   0 2468M  179M  128M S  2.5  4.7  0:10.10 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -childI
   1171 falcon     20   0 3166M  113M 77120 S  1.9  3.0  0:19.05 /usr/bin/kwin_x11
   5617 falcon     20   0  8900  4580  3404 R  1.3  0.1  0:02.82 /usr/bin/htop
   1868 falcon     20   0 3688M  420M  155M S  1.3 11.0  0:27.02 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox --private-window
   4560 falcon     20   0 2468M  179M  128M S  1.3  4.7  0:02.59 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -childI
   1864 falcon     20   0 3688M  420M  155M S  1.3 11.0  0:10.75 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox --private-window
   1936 falcon     20   0 2504M  172M  107M S  1.3  4.5  0:22.85 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -childI
   1754 falcon     20   0 2890M  228M  114M S  1.3  6.0  0:04.45 /usr/bin/plasmashell
    729 polkitd    20   0 1621M 22904 15692 S  1.3  0.6  0:00.38 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd --no-debug
F1Help  F2Setup F3SearchF4FilterF5Tree  F6SortByF7Nice -F8Nice +F9Kill  F10Quit

Is there any other information that I can provide to help others?

Your htop output isnt sorted by memory … so I cant really tell much besides firefox taking up roughly 45% from what I can see and plasma+kwin+Xorg taking 20% … and your RAM using less than 50% of its total capacity.

Please use the command I posted above to sort by use… but I also dont see it being overloaded.

Output of sudo ps_mem

$ sudo ps_mem
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

 96.0 KiB + 110.0 KiB = 206.0 KiB       start_kdeinit
136.0 KiB + 176.0 KiB = 312.0 KiB       fusermount
316.0 KiB + 350.0 KiB = 666.0 KiB       fsnotifier64
348.0 KiB + 414.0 KiB = 762.0 KiB       lvmetad
348.0 KiB + 440.0 KiB = 788.0 KiB       rtkit-daemon
392.0 KiB + 468.0 KiB = 860.0 KiB       crond
504.0 KiB + 576.0 KiB =   1.1 MiB       ksysguardd
596.0 KiB + 772.0 KiB =   1.3 MiB       dconf-service
604.0 KiB + 838.0 KiB =   1.4 MiB       agent
628.0 KiB + 816.0 KiB =   1.4 MiB       xdg-permission-store
896.0 KiB +   1.1 MiB =   2.0 MiB       gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor
572.0 KiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.0 MiB       avahi-daemon (2)
524.0 KiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.1 MiB       idea.sh
992.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.1 MiB       xdg-document-portal
976.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.1 MiB       at-spi-bus-launcher
  1.0 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   2.3 MiB       at-spi2-registryd
964.0 KiB +   1.3 MiB =   2.3 MiB       gvfsd
  1.1 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   2.5 MiB       gvfsd-metadata
  1.1 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   2.5 MiB       gsettings-helper
  1.2 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   2.6 MiB       gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
  1.2 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   2.7 MiB       gvfsd-fuse
  1.0 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   2.7 MiB       startplasma-x11
  1.1 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.7 MiB       gvfsd-dnssd
  1.2 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   2.9 MiB       gvfsd-trash
  1.2 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   2.9 MiB       gvfsd-network
  1.4 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.9 MiB       bluetoothd
  1.1 MiB +   1.9 MiB =   3.0 MiB       gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
  1.2 MiB +   2.1 MiB =   3.3 MiB       systemd-timesyncd
  1.5 MiB +   2.3 MiB =   3.8 MiB       systemd-logind
  1.7 MiB +   2.3 MiB =   4.0 MiB       sudo
  1.9 MiB +   2.8 MiB =   4.7 MiB       sddm
  2.1 MiB +   2.9 MiB =   5.0 MiB       upowerd
  1.9 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   5.1 MiB       gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor
  2.1 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   5.3 MiB       bash
  2.1 MiB +   3.6 MiB =   5.7 MiB       sddm-helper
  2.2 MiB +   3.5 MiB =   5.7 MiB       kscreen_backend_launcher
  2.3 MiB +   3.5 MiB =   5.8 MiB       xembedsniproxy
  2.3 MiB +   3.5 MiB =   5.8 MiB       gmenudbusmenuproxy
  2.6 MiB +   3.6 MiB =   6.2 MiB       cupsd
  2.4 MiB +   4.0 MiB =   6.4 MiB       pipewire-media-session
  3.2 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   6.4 MiB       haveged
  3.0 MiB +   3.7 MiB =   6.7 MiB       wpa_supplicant
  2.9 MiB +   4.0 MiB =   6.9 MiB       xdg-desktop-portal
  3.6 MiB +   4.3 MiB =   7.9 MiB       ModemManager
  3.3 MiB +   5.0 MiB =   8.3 MiB       pipewire
  3.8 MiB +   4.8 MiB =   8.6 MiB       dbus-daemon (3)
  3.8 MiB +   5.1 MiB =   8.9 MiB       udisksd
  4.7 MiB +   5.3 MiB =  10.0 MiB       systemd-udevd
  4.5 MiB +   7.0 MiB =  11.5 MiB       klauncher
  5.7 MiB +   6.5 MiB =  12.2 MiB       colord
  4.9 MiB +   7.4 MiB =  12.2 MiB       polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
  4.9 MiB +   7.4 MiB =  12.2 MiB       kwalletd5
  5.5 MiB +   7.2 MiB =  12.7 MiB       pulseaudio
  5.1 MiB +   7.6 MiB =  12.7 MiB       kaccess
  4.7 MiB +   8.2 MiB =  12.8 MiB       org_kde_powerdevil
  1.4 MiB +  11.9 MiB =  13.2 MiB       kdeinit5 (3)
  5.0 MiB +   8.3 MiB =  13.3 MiB       ksmserver
  5.4 MiB +   8.0 MiB =  13.4 MiB       kactivitymanagerd
  5.8 MiB +   8.1 MiB =  13.9 MiB       kglobalaccel5
  6.6 MiB +   8.3 MiB =  14.9 MiB       NetworkManager
  4.9 MiB +  12.1 MiB =  17.0 MiB       systemd (3)
  7.1 MiB +  10.7 MiB =  17.9 MiB       msm_kde_notifier
  7.4 MiB +  12.6 MiB =  19.9 MiB       kdeconnectd
 10.6 MiB +  19.8 MiB =  30.4 MiB       pamac-tray-appindicator
 15.4 MiB +  15.8 MiB =  31.3 MiB       polkitd
 11.8 MiB +  19.8 MiB =  31.6 MiB       kded5
  7.0 MiB +  28.1 MiB =  35.1 MiB       postgres (7)
 15.4 MiB +  24.0 MiB =  39.4 MiB       yakuake
 19.5 MiB +  34.0 MiB =  53.5 MiB       systemd-journald
 14.8 MiB +  41.5 MiB =  56.3 MiB       xdg-desktop-portal-kde
 32.4 MiB +  46.7 MiB =  79.1 MiB       kate
 18.0 MiB +  62.2 MiB =  80.1 MiB       baloo_file
 33.6 MiB +  50.3 MiB =  83.9 MiB       ksysguard
 19.8 MiB +  65.5 MiB =  85.4 MiB       baloorunner
 49.2 MiB +  64.1 MiB = 113.3 MiB       kwin_x11
 65.4 MiB + 108.8 MiB = 174.1 MiB       Xorg
102.2 MiB + 124.0 MiB = 226.2 MiB       krunner
127.1 MiB + 155.4 MiB = 282.5 MiB       plasmashell
318.9 MiB + 379.0 MiB = 697.9 MiB       MainThread
642.4 MiB + 856.6 MiB =   1.5 GiB       firefox (8)
899.9 MiB + 938.3 MiB =   1.8 GiB       java (2)
---------------------------------
                          5.7 GiB
=================================


Apart from firefox(7 tabs) I have not opened any thing in extra. But if I open things like Idea(IntelliJ editor). The system is hanging and I have no other option than force restarting it by long pressing the power button on my laptop.

Well … thats half your RAM right there. And FF(7tab of whatever) is another 37%.
I would say you need to check your habits, and/or configure your system for your use-case and minimal resources, and/or upgrade your hardware,
and/or tame java

(for example … doing nothing else you could ‘optimize’ your low-resource system by doing things like tune your swap to not engage so easily … you could install things like ZRAM … etc)

@cscs

Thanks so much for your reply, even that is what I am thinking, It might be due to the hardware. Is there anything apart from my hardware, what else can I tweak to improve the performance of Manjaro?

Apart from this I am also facing a small problem, after booting(after the green Manjaro logo icon screen). I am getting the black screen until my desktop is visible. Could this also be a problem with the RAM issue?

Theres mmore than a few things you could do … I suggest doing your own research on things like swappines and ZRAM and more.

Also … you can slim your plasma… mainly just give it as much of the windoze95 treatment as you can stand and get rid of stuff you dont need. Heres an old tutorial on some ways to do that:

But I will give you one gift … here is a script me and another user were making a while back.
It should make it easier for you to adjust some values, like swappiness (I suggest value of 10)

Sorry to bum in @cscs. I’d just like to make some suggestions:

  1. Your disk is slow. If you can, get a faster one.
  2. Create a swap area with at least 2GB, for a 4GB machine.
  3. Don’t set swappiness too low. With the amount of RAM you have, swap should begin earlier to minimize the freezes. With 4GB, I’d set it to 25.
  4. Use ZSWAP instead of ZRAM. ZSWAP will work together with your swap area. It will compress swap pages in RAM and later swap them to the disk when needed. When set properly, the freezes from swapping virtually disappear. I was skeptical of these tools, but now I use ZSWAP on all my machines (except my laptop, which has 16GB). ZRAM compresses a part of your RAM and uses it as swap. The problem is that you don’t have much RAM. From my experience, you won’t get much benefit from it.
  5. I suggest the following parameters for ZSWAP:
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/same_filled_pages_enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/max_pool_percent:25
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor:lz4
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/zpool:z3fold

Note max_pool_percent is the same as swappiness.

Never apologize for adding to the conversation in a constructive way :relaxed:

2 Likes

Apparently ps_mem has deducted you’re using more ram than your machine has available. Those numbers don’t fit together.

Aren’t there shared libraries counted repeatedly?

EDIT: Look:

[lcoimbra@dg-lcoimbra ~]$ sudo ps_mem          
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

  8.0 KiB +  70.0 KiB =  78.0 KiB       xsettingsd
 36.0 KiB +  52.0 KiB =  88.0 KiB       start_kdeinit
 16.0 KiB + 158.0 KiB = 174.0 KiB       dconf-service
 12.0 KiB + 170.0 KiB = 182.0 KiB       startplasma-x11
 20.0 KiB + 197.0 KiB = 217.0 KiB       gsettings-helper
116.0 KiB + 248.0 KiB = 364.0 KiB       sleep
188.0 KiB + 224.0 KiB = 412.0 KiB       lvmetad
188.0 KiB + 238.0 KiB = 426.0 KiB       crond
220.0 KiB + 310.0 KiB = 530.0 KiB       rtkit-daemon
192.0 KiB + 370.0 KiB = 562.0 KiB       gvfsd-trash
272.0 KiB + 342.0 KiB = 614.0 KiB       irqbalance
292.0 KiB + 502.0 KiB = 794.0 KiB       at-spi2-registryd
416.0 KiB + 462.0 KiB = 878.0 KiB       dbus-launch
428.0 KiB + 642.0 KiB =   1.0 MiB       gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor
424.0 KiB + 661.0 KiB =   1.1 MiB       at-spi-bus-launcher
428.0 KiB + 678.0 KiB =   1.1 MiB       gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
564.0 KiB + 650.0 KiB =   1.2 MiB       nxexec
492.0 KiB + 780.0 KiB =   1.2 MiB       sddm
480.0 KiB + 808.0 KiB =   1.3 MiB       gmenudbusmenuproxy
416.0 KiB + 942.0 KiB =   1.3 MiB       gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
620.0 KiB + 910.0 KiB =   1.5 MiB       gvfsd-dnssd
600.0 KiB + 936.0 KiB =   1.5 MiB       gvfsd
528.0 KiB +   1.0 MiB =   1.6 MiB       avahi-daemon (2)
716.0 KiB + 876.0 KiB =   1.6 MiB       gvfsd-fuse
724.0 KiB + 976.0 KiB =   1.7 MiB       gvfsd-network
552.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   1.7 MiB       systemd-timesyncd
836.0 KiB + 986.0 KiB =   1.8 MiB       nxd
772.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.0 MiB       xembedsniproxy
808.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.0 MiB       kscreen_backend_launcher
784.0 KiB +   1.3 MiB =   2.1 MiB       systemd-logind
988.0 KiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.5 MiB       klauncher
480.0 KiB +   2.2 MiB =   2.7 MiB       kdeinit5 (2)
  1.2 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   2.9 MiB       kglobalaccel5
  1.2 MiB +   1.8 MiB =   3.0 MiB       upowerd
  1.5 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   3.2 MiB       sddm-helper
  1.5 MiB +   1.8 MiB =   3.3 MiB       systemd-udevd
  1.3 MiB +   1.9 MiB =   3.3 MiB       cupsd
  1.4 MiB +   2.4 MiB =   3.8 MiB       gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor
  2.0 MiB +   2.1 MiB =   4.1 MiB       haveged
  1.9 MiB +   2.3 MiB =   4.2 MiB       kaccess
  1.9 MiB +   2.8 MiB =   4.6 MiB       kactivitymanagerd
  2.5 MiB +   3.0 MiB =   5.5 MiB       colord
  2.3 MiB +   3.3 MiB =   5.6 MiB       sudo
  1.4 MiB +   4.2 MiB =   5.6 MiB       nmbd
  2.2 MiB +   3.6 MiB =   5.9 MiB       ksmserver
  2.9 MiB +   3.0 MiB =   6.0 MiB       plugplay.exe
  2.7 MiB +   3.5 MiB =   6.2 MiB       ModemManager
  3.2 MiB +   3.4 MiB =   6.6 MiB       rpcss.exe
  2.5 MiB +   4.1 MiB =   6.6 MiB       bash (2)
  3.1 MiB +   3.8 MiB =   6.9 MiB       org_kde_powerdevil
  3.5 MiB +   3.6 MiB =   7.1 MiB       services.exe
  3.2 MiB +   4.0 MiB =   7.3 MiB       dbus-daemon (4)
  3.5 MiB +   4.6 MiB =   8.1 MiB       udisksd
  4.2 MiB +   5.0 MiB =   9.1 MiB       pulseaudio
  3.7 MiB +   5.5 MiB =   9.2 MiB       kded5
  2.8 MiB +   6.8 MiB =   9.6 MiB       systemd (3)
  4.4 MiB +   5.3 MiB =   9.7 MiB       kdeconnectd
  4.4 MiB +   5.5 MiB =   9.9 MiB       polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
  3.2 MiB +   6.8 MiB =  10.0 MiB       clementine-tagreader (2)
  4.9 MiB +   6.6 MiB =  11.5 MiB       NetworkManager
  5.6 MiB +   6.1 MiB =  11.6 MiB       systemd-journald
  7.0 MiB +   7.5 MiB =  14.5 MiB       msm_kde_notifier
  6.8 MiB +   8.3 MiB =  15.1 MiB       octopi-notifier
  3.6 MiB +  12.6 MiB =  16.2 MiB       smbd (4)
  8.3 MiB +  13.0 MiB =  21.3 MiB       speedcrunch
 10.9 MiB +  11.2 MiB =  22.1 MiB       polkitd
 10.9 MiB +  11.3 MiB =  22.2 MiB       explorer.exe
 12.5 MiB +  13.0 MiB =  25.5 MiB       nxclient.bin
 12.6 MiB +  12.9 MiB =  25.6 MiB       winedevice.exe (2)
 15.3 MiB +  15.6 MiB =  30.9 MiB       OSPPSVC.EXE
 17.5 MiB +  25.6 MiB =  43.0 MiB       yakuake
 21.7 MiB +  21.8 MiB =  43.5 MiB       wineserver64
 26.5 MiB +  35.6 MiB =  62.1 MiB       krusader
 32.3 MiB +  34.6 MiB =  66.9 MiB       yad
 38.9 MiB +  39.7 MiB =  78.6 MiB       nxnode.bin
 42.1 MiB +  46.8 MiB =  88.9 MiB       kwin_x11
 48.1 MiB +  49.2 MiB =  97.2 MiB       nxserver.bin
 55.4 MiB +  69.4 MiB = 124.8 MiB       clementine
 81.2 MiB +  96.6 MiB = 177.8 MiB       zim
 90.3 MiB +  95.7 MiB = 186.0 MiB       megasync
107.1 MiB + 111.3 MiB = 218.4 MiB       winewrapper.exe (12)
134.6 MiB + 146.2 MiB = 280.9 MiB       okular
155.3 MiB + 252.5 MiB = 407.8 MiB       Xorg
283.4 MiB + 294.5 MiB = 577.9 MiB       plasmashell
411.5 MiB + 450.6 MiB = 862.1 MiB       falkon
505.2 MiB + 608.2 MiB =   1.1 GiB       QtWebEngineProcess (5)
  2.2 GiB +   2.3 GiB =   4.5 GiB       EXCEL.EXE (12)
---------------------------------
                          9.3 GiB
=================================
[lcoimbra@dg-lcoimbra ~]$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7837        4675        2101         514        1060        2392
Swap:          8191         321        7870

ps_mem isn’t a good tool to deduct the total RAM usage.

1 Like

mbb, thanks a ton for your reply. Would you suggest going for a ram upgrade to 16 GiB? Will this fix the problem?

I also use this free -h to view

$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3.7Gi       1.5Gi       373Mi       224Mi       1.9Gi       1.7Gi
Swap:            0B          0B          0B


Having more memory is always good. Depending on your usage of the computer, you may not need 16GB. It also depends on your slot configuration. How many slots do you have and how are they occupied? Is there a free one? If so, you can buy 8GB and you’ll have 12GB (check in your manual if the computer supports it). I’d say, nowadays, 4GB is the minimum, but it’s much better to have ate least 8GB. If you make use of VM’s or programs very heavy on RAM usage, then go to 12GB or 16GB.

However, looking at your specs, the most advantage would come from upgrading your hard drive. Really, it’s a huge difference to have a fast SSD. So it all depends on your financial capacity. If you have to choose go for the SSD first and set swap and zswap. Later you can upgrade the ram.

@mbb,

Yes there are two slots, one already occupied and one free. Let me check if my mother board supports 8GB ram.

mbb,

Sorry for the late reply
My default settings

$ grep -R . /sys/module/zswap/parameters
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/same_filled_pages_enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/max_pool_percent:20
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor:zstd
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/zpool:z3fold
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/accept_threshold_percent:90

Changing the settings that you’d mentioned

$ grep -R . /sys/module/zswap/parameters
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/same_filled_pages_enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled:Y
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/max_pool_percent:25
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor:lz4
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/zpool:z3fold
/sys/module/zswap/parameters/accept_threshold_percent:90

Let me check if I am still facing the slowness/freezing issue.

1 Like

Nice tough :+1: