RAM usage for XFCE

I have just reinstalled manjaro and have this RAM usage:

free -h
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:      7,6Gi       5,8Gi       164Mi       935Mi       1,6Gi       575Mi
Swap:             0B          0B          0B

Are these values normal?.. they seem to be a little exagerated. I thought XFCE was light
Is GNOME lighter?
Thank You

You have no swap file and the /tmp is using tmpfs which is a dynamic ramdisk that defaults to 50% of your available ram.

Note: The actual memory/swap consumption depends on how much is used, as tmpfs partitions do not consume any memory until it is actually needed.
tmpfs - ArchWiki

Configure swap Swap - Manjaro - other options is zram and zswap but they alle use RAM

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ok. I’ll do that

RAM usage depends on what applications you run.
According to this output you have 8GB of RAM - but no swap at all.
You should have swap with this amount of RAM.

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Make sure to mark his answer as the solution as a thank you and allow the forum to mark the thread as resolved when you have no other questions related to the title…

Good luck :wink:

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this is the output with swap

free -h
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:      7,6Gi       5,7Gi       156Mi       990Mi       1,7Gi       608Mi
Swap:          2,0Gi       0,0Ki       2,0Gi

isn´t 5,7 G a lot of usage?

or is the usage just 990Mi?
Sorry for not understanding it

No, you are reading this correctly.
5.7Gi are used

It depends on what you have running - use a system monitor
graphical
or top or htop or glances
to see what is going on.

Just for reference:

free -h
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:      7,7Gi       1,6Gi       2,4Gi       226Mi       3,7Gi       5,5Gi
Swap:           11Gi          0B        11Gi

this is what my system currently looks like with just the browser and an idle terminal running.

You know that 2GB of swap is better than nothing, but it will not allow you to hibernate your system?
For that you’ll have to have about the same size swap as you have RAM.

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And here’s mine :rofl:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            31Gi        11Gi       8.6Gi        60Mi        11Gi        19Gi
Swap:           63Gi          0B        63Gi
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mhh ok now I am just using Skype, telegram-desktop, terminal and firefox browser and it looks like this:

free -h
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:      7,6Gi       4,8Gi       1,5Gi       526Mi       1,3Gi       2,0Gi
Swap:          2,0Gi       1,0Gi       1,0Gi

is this normal??.. it seems to me it’s a lot of RAM for just four apps… isn´t it a little too much??

As much as we all would like that apps use like only 1k, thats not the reality of life :wink:
But…it’s a lot better usage in Linux as it is in “other” operating systems :wink:

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mmh ok. I didn’t know it uses so much RAM… are other DE better in this? I mean does KDE use less RAM?

There are plenty of pages on the internet on that topic with comparisions etc…

IT doesn’t - it’s not about the Desktop Environment.
They, by themselves, are all pretty much the same - and all nowhere near the RAM usage you report here.

It’s about the apps you use with it. The programs you run.
If you want to know what is using the memory, just go and look.

top
htop
glances
...

in a terminal

or a graphical system monitor

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please note that firefox can be pain in the arse and is well known to reserve memory (up to 2 gb) even when it’s not used. don’t hesitate, from here everything looks quite usual, a lot of your ram is used as cached (temporary) space and if you’re using more apps this cache is cleared.
to run linux with a graphical enviroment in a smooth way needs about 4gb ram itself. 8gb ram is even with linux (and a graphical enviroment) the basic minimum nowadays.
santa claus is coming soon and maybe he is willing to give you another 8 or 16 gb ram as present. hope you had been nice and brave this year :blush:

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I used Xfce before, but not the default config, with Picom, Ulauncher, Firefox with ~10 tabs, Terminator, Thunar, Geany and Thunderbird opened, I had something like 2,2-2,4 Gi.

The easiest way to see the detailed memory usage is to use the task manager. You can also install smem package and use the command :

sudo smem -tka
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Similar 8GB Xfce with firefox (1 tab) open:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7.6Gi       1.2Gi       4.0Gi       389Mi       2.4Gi       5.7Gi
Swap:          3.4Gi          0B       3.4Gi
sudo pamac install smem

use smem as @Pouet stated. you’ll see.

a tip:

smem -tka > /tmp/smem.txt

use a editor and open /tmp/smem.txt

KDE: since you asked.

tracy@daphne:~$ free
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         8016336     3525916      685144      734168     3805276     3480632
Swap:       21578748           0    21578748

That’s with 2 instances of Firefox (not just 2 Widows), Deluge. Handbrake, Dolphin, Mulvad VPN, Feral Media Library and konsole. One FF instanance has 1 tab, the other 12 Tabs.

That’s GUI apps.

as a comparison this is my xfce desktop.

tracy@princess:~$ free
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         4015900     1011596     1739572       25780     1264732     2744864
Swap:              0           0           0

note to self… there’s your problem, that’s wy hibernate don’t work

Sorry for not answering. I will check it out tomorrow Thank You!