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I also don't understand why every chat app needs 1GB of RAM to itself.
every chat app needs over a gig of ram to itself for "developer productivity"
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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I got surprised like two days ago when I got a desktop notification that Linux kernel killed a process, because there was no memory available, or something like that. I didn't know it can do that, lol.
Pretty useful for not getting locked out. It can be finetuned if you want to assign priorities and that.
It is usually handled by systemd-oomd.
Many people who don't know what they're talking about in this thread. No, used memory does not include cached memory. You can confirm this trivially by running free -m and adding up the numbers (used + cached + free = total). Used memory can not be reclaimed until the process holding it frees it or dies. Not all cached memory can be reclaimed either, which is why the kernel reports an estimate of available memory. That's the number that really matters, because aside from some edges cases that's the number that determines whether you're out of memory or not.
Anyway the fact that you can't run Linux with 16GB is weird and indicates that some software you are using has a RAM leak (a Firefox extension perhaps?). Firefox will use memory if it's there but it's designed to cope with low memory as well, it just unloads tabs quicker so you have to reload often. There are also extensions that make tab unloading more aggressive, maybe that would help - especially if there's memory pressure from other processes too.
Yeah the cache as part of used memory theory didn't stack up. This comment (sorry, Lemmy probably doesn't handle the link well) showed 54GB in use, 30GB cached, and 13GB available. 54+12 = 67GB total so cached doesn't seem to be counted as in use since it should be counted as free (mostly).
In the end, I'm pretty sure it's a memory hog website. It kept filling up until GNOME crashed and I lost my progress (I was trying to order prints for 1000 photos on a horrible website that made me change settings one photo at a time, and the longer I took the more RAM filled up).
Anyway the fact that you canβt run Linux with 16GB is weird
I mean, it runs fine. It's more how I'm using it. Firefox 4GB, Element 1GB, Signal 1GB, Beeper 1GB, Steam 2GB, Joplin 1GB. That's all just open and idle (chats and Steam don't even have windows, just background) and are the minimum I would have open at any point. That's already 10GB. By the time I open a couple of windows in a Jetbrains IDE or a particularly demanding website and suddenly it's suffocating.
many Linux distros are optimized to use as much available RAM as possible, free RAM is wasted RAM
Most would still run with a lot less anyway
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I have a memory consumption issue with Ubuntu, because I stupidly set up the system to have 0 swap. This means under high memory pressure, the entire system could suddenly crash.
To be fair, Windows isn't a shining beacon either because whenever I attempt something very GPU intensive like running local LLMs the GPU overheats in a split second before the fans have time to spin up and the entire system shuts down.
How does that happen? Shouldn't the GPU and CPU have thermal throttling so even under intense loads it just slows down to keep temps down?
When I play games on my laptop the integrated graphics are at 100% most of the time but it doesn't cause the system to crash.
So the system is a gaming laptop which might explain things. The CPU has liquid metal for cooling and a lower TDP so it's fine. Whereas the GPU has a higher TGP and if ran hard draws like 120W. If the GPU fans are not already on this quickly overwhelming the GPU thermally.
Weird. If I was going to saturate my GPU, I'd pick an intensive game. Seems odd that a gaming laptop might get overwhelmed and shut off if a game is too intensive? Or is is something special about LLMs that make it the Archilles' heel?
Just enable zram. It's super easy to set up too.
How do I do that?
every chat app might use ~1GB because most of them are electron apps, which all spawn their own instance of chromium
I love how out of every single graphics backend option they chose the chromium Chrome is known for not slowing down after 3 tabs.
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It's already been explained elsewhere, but the cache can be free, as needed - that's how linux works.
There's 57+ GB available ram, yet.
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Don't be confused by cached ram, be confused by the oom killer activating while you have plenty of swap and for some reason it kills the shell you ran Firefox from.
If you want to go on a memory allocation adventure try disabling memory overcommit π₯²
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18gb is nothing, my Firefox regularly eats 70gb (30gb is the normal load I see after browser restart) 
I don't know if this is something to brag about, it seems more like something isn't working right...
Browser restart means without any tabs? If so that is some concern
What are you doing to poor Firefox?
Firefox with an inflation fetish
How do you do this? I usually have about 2k open tabs and my firefox uses a fraction of that.
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Does it mean 35.1 GB out of the 44.3 GB is actually cached? Then you have quite low actual RAM usage considering you have 67 GB.
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