[plug] memory question

[Craig Ringer]

> One xterm, local
> One Xterm, ssh to another machine
> Gnome or KDE running (whichever you normally use)

Whatever you normally use :-) I'm running XFCE4 . My memory footprint
currently, including a bunch of daemons, X, Mozilla-xft2, and XFCE is 
about 75MB (XFree86 4.3 at 1600x1200 with background image, too).

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        756         192        563           0         33         83
-/+ buffers/cache:      75         681
Swap:       956          0         956

As you can see from the tiny amount of RAM used for cache, I've only
just booted the machine.

With GDM running, but logged in only at one console:
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         756        168        587          0         34         83
-/+ buffers/cache:       50        705
Swap:        956          0        956

Without GDM running either, so there's no X server:
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         756        149        607          0         34         82
-/+ buffers/cache:       31        725
Swap:        956          0        956

And with just an xterm running under X:
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         756        162        593          0         36         84
-/+ buffers/cache:       41        714
Swap:        956          0        956

> My experimental Gnome setup is running those basic
> desktop functions plus cups, smb, sshd
> and seems to use roughly 185 Meg.

:-P

> I'm not sure if this is to be expected, or if there is
> something wrong I'm not noticing...
> I don't have another machine to really compare with..

> I guess I have the feeling it's all a bit much for idling...

Yep - that would be a desktop environment - "too much". I try them out 
each time a new release comes out, but always end up concluding "it's 
closer to what I want it to do, but IceWM/XFCE still do the job better 
and don't take a week to load". I find that both GNOME2 and KDE3 have 
this "you can't do that, that's not how you're meant to work" feel about 
them - *blech*.

Craig Ringer