Memory issue KDE Plasma Manjaro Lenovo Ideacentre 4GB RAM

I recommend you use zram instead of normal swap, obviously more real ram is better but zram holds up really good if you only have 4gb of ram. I also have 4gb of ram and a HDD, I have tried manjaro kde/gnome/xfce and all have been very useable… with the right tweaks. Unfortunately most those tweaks are kind of advanced (changing to zen kernel, reducing swapiness) the one thing I can recommend is you to use psd (profile sync daemon) and dont open more than 4 firefox tabs.

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What else would I be comparing it with when posting to someone who has 4gb of total ram? I also notice you left off the end of my comment. Thats not fair or right.

What tool did you use to measure both?
RAM usage 78% including cache? You can ignore cache.

https://www.linuxatemyram.com

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Using Gnome system monitor. It runs well on Manjaro KDE Plasma. It plots RAM usage and SWAP usage graphically.

I don’t about cache usage. How to see it? Gnome system monitor does not show it (or I don’t know how to switch it on)

Will try zram. Thanks for the input.

sudo inxi -mj

cat /proc/swaps

Remember you can configure vm.swappiness parameter to let Manjaro use more or less often the swap file (a lower value means less use):

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Yes. Or preferably 16GB.

No reason to complicate anything or try to work around this issue. Just increase the RAM to 8GB (or 16 if applicable), and you’ll liberate your system from the bottlenecks you’re facing.

:point_up:

The first two posts already gave you the best approach to this issue.

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Thanks Arrababiski and all the others who responded.

My problem is resolved, I don’t think I even need to buy more RAM now.

I fired up many heavy apps simultaneously, including ‘Universe Sandbox’ (on Steam) and Manjaro was running very comfortably. It handled everything!

The system is running just fine.

vm.swapiness=10, RAM = 4096, SWAP = 8192, CACHE is about 1.2GB

Arrababiski,

sudo inxi -mj

returns the following:

Memory:
  RAM: total: 3.66 GiB used: 2.11 GiB (57.6%)
  Array-1: capacity: 8 GiB slots: 1 EC: None
  Device-1: ChannelA-DIMM0 type: DDR3 size: 4 GiB speed: 1600 MT/s

I suppose if I upgrade RAM, the MAX my hardware would allow is 8GB (1 slot)?

Yes extra physical RAM would be the best thing, I understand

Jim B, yes, only one slot and it appears that the hardware will not recognise more than 8GB?

sudo inxi -mj returns:

Memory:
  RAM: total: 3.66 GiB used: 2.11 GiB (57.6%)
  Array-1: capacity: 8 GiB slots: 1 EC: None
  Device-1: ChannelA-DIMM0 type: DDR3 size: 4 GiB speed: 1600 MT/s

Kernel: 6.0.2-2-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.25.5
Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: LENOVO ideacentre AIO 310-20IAP

Memory:
  RAM: total: 3.66 GiB used: 2.11 GiB (57.6%)
  Array-1: capacity: 8 GiB slots: 1 EC: None
  Device-1: ChannelA-DIMM0 type: DDR3 size: 4 GiB speed: 1600 MT/s

This system was giving me hell with ZERO SWAP. Now it is fine, running without issues. SWAPFILE is critical for Manjaro I suppose, if you have only 4GB RAM.

vm.swapiness=10, RAM = 4096, SWAP = 8192, CACHE is about 1.2GB

Yes, the max memory is 8gb. Swap is nessasary if you are running anything but the low resource desktops. Had you installed LXQt, 4gb would be all you would likely need.

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Thanks. Did not know of LXQt! Will install it in a separate partition

There was a very major update offered today in which my installation updated 420 packages.

After this update, my Manjaro installation is sluggish, slow, and cache has swelled by 50% , RAM being consumed is much more and SWAP is also not very efficient though it is working.

Manjaro is working, not freezing, but it’s just not up to the mark on my hardware after today’s update.

Ultimately the solution appears to be physical upgrade of RAM. In my hardware, the maximum allowed physical RAM is 8GB so I suppose I’ll have to switch to a lighter distro like LXQt when Manjaro KDE outgrows 8GB

Manjaro does not make a LXQt installer iso. Its my favorite desktop. But I do create a Manjaro LXQt spin, you can find them here. There was a large update this morning and the old spins are over a month old. I will be releasing SbK LXQt 22.0.0.1 within the next 24 hours or so.

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One question, ¿have you got an mechanical HDD or a SSD drive?

Another question: ¿have you seen with top command which processes are slowing down your computer?

And finally a tip: change baloo (KDE’s indexer) default behaviour as seen in this thread:

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Arrababiski, I have a mechanical HDD. 1 TB. Manjaro is on 300 GB partition, rest is unformatted space for any other distro I might try

Yes, I just used TOP. It’s usually the vivaldi browser but sometimes XORG tops the list.

I was using Chrome earlier (before making my swapfile). Chrome is hopeless on my hardware. Opera and Firefox did not perform well either.

Vivaldi (plus adblock) has been an ok experience, on my hardware. At least till now.

I reset baloo as per your post. That has helped.

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Just a heads up, the new SbK LXQt spin has been released in case you want to try it.

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If you can, change the HDD for an SSD. The performance improvement is impressive at startup, program loading, faster swap file… for me it is the most important thing in terms of performance. I’d rather an SSD instead of 4 GB RAM more.

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Ok. Will do this!