Cinnamon's memory usage

[Forkjulle]

Compiz tends to hog memory, but Cinnamon seems to use quite a bit too. Unless I'm wrong.

Does this look about right? (Cinnamon in 2nd spot.)

[Oscar799]

Moved here by moderator

[esteban1uy]

Mine is not that memory hungry:

[AlbertP]

I've done a pull request to fix a small memory leak, but there are probably more memory leaks left.

By the way 78MB is also way too much. It should be possible to get 40 to 60 MB memory usage.

[Morrog]

is that smaller or bigger than a default gnome-shell? there hasn't been much publicized data about the memory performance of cinnamon (in comparison to gnome-shell, gnome 2 and maté)

[esteban1uy]

The same machine running Gnome-shell:

[AlbertP]

That's presumably still Mint's default Gnome 3.2.1. A lot of memory leaks have been fixed since then. Mint 13 will have Gnome 3.4 which is probably a better comparison.

[esteban1uy]

Same machine running Gnome-classic (3.2.1, same as the other captures):

[cwwgateway]

My Cinnamon is running at 43 MiB. On the same machine Gnome Shell runs at about 39 MiB, and Gnome Fallback runs at 10.4 MiB.

Note: I say about for Gnome Shell because it fluctuates around 39 MiB.

[AlbertP]

If you are counting Gnome classic or 2 memory usage you also have to count gnome-sound-applet, metacity and probably more things which are a seperate process on gnome 2 or classic but integrated in shell/cinnamon. Just gnome-panel isn't really a fair comparison.

[cwwgateway]

If you are counting Gnome classic or 2 memory usage you also have to count gnome-sound-applet, metacity and probably more things which are a seperate process on gnome 2 or classic but integrated in shell/cinnamon. Just gnome-panel isn't really a fair comparison.

You're right. And even worse, I run gnome classic with compiz and I'm not counting compiz, so it would probably be a lot more. I'm impressed by Cinnamon's low memory usage, though.

[Kelley_Green]

My Cinnamon is running at 43 MiB.

When I start LM12 I have about the same memory usage.

But after an uptime of only 1.5 days it's at 395 MB

[Kelley_Green]

My Cinnamon is running at 43 MiB.

When I start LM12 I have about the same memory usage.

But after an uptime of only 1.5 days it's at 395 MB

Now it's up to 627.3 MiB after 4+ days.

[esteban1uy]

I've done a pull request to fix a small memory leak, but there are probably more memory leaks left.

By the way 78MB is also way too much. It should be possible to get 40 to 60 MB memory usage.

Well, this is LMDE "live" 64bits with Cinnamon desktop (yes, iso images are out):


And this is LMDE "live" 32bits with Cinnamon too:


Being live images you can be sure this represents the system in its most pristine state, even though, under 64bits with an pretty new kernel (3.2), newer xorg, drivers, etc, there is no significant difference with my actual LM12 Cinnamon installation.

But there's something for sure: Cinnamon and Gnome3 are pointers hell (from the processor's perspective). The 64 bits versions almost doubles the memory usage of the 32 bits ones (take Nautilus as reference).

[ramartz]

I just notice now that I have the same issue also, I'm running LM12 on Dell Inspiron N7010.
I think more uptime hours makes the memory usage grow even bigger; could be a general memory leak issue?

[Kelley_Green]

More up-time hours definitely makes the memory usage grow bigger.
Is anyone working on this?
Is there a way to restart Cinnamon, without restarting the PC, to reset Cinnamon back to lower memory usage?

[esteban1uy]

"(...) Is there a way to restart Cinnamon, without restarting the PC, to reset Cinnamon back to lower memory usage?

Of course, just look at Cinnamon's settings applet.

This is before restarting Cinnamon:


And this is after restarting it:

[AlbertP]

Is there a way to restart Cinnamon, without restarting the PC, to reset Cinnamon back to lower memory usage?

Press Alt-F2, type r in the box, and press Enter. That restarts cinnamon (and yes it works for Gnome Shell as well).

[Kelley_Green]

Is there a way to restart Cinnamon, without restarting the PC, to reset Cinnamon back to lower memory usage?

Press Alt-F2, type r in the box, and press Enter. That restarts cinnamon (and yes it works for Gnome Shell as well).

Thanks!

[Therion87]

That is a pretty nasty memory leak or group of. I noticed it before I would start my machine up around 600 MiB total memory usuage in no time it would be up above 1 Gb. Are these issues being addressed? There aren't really any places to check Cinnamon development and changelogs a really minimal from a techincal standpoint.