LMDE XFCE ram usage at boot

[kei84]

Hi, i currently using LMDE XFCE 64 but i noticed that the ram usage at boot is 190 MB while in LMDE GNOME 64 it was only 140~150 MB.

Does anyone know why it happens and how can I solve this issue? And I also read somewhrere in the forum that the LMDE XFCE 32 use about 110 MB at boot. I find it strange that the 64 bit uses more ram that the 32 bit.

[aljoriz]

I can only give a guess. LMDE xfce is not totally a pure xfce, (i.e. it uses brasero instead of xfburn, gedit instead of mousepad). I am sorry if I can not give assistance in solving the problem as I really don't know anything about developing stuff for Linux sorry

[Hezy]

Hi, i currently using LMDE XFCE 64 but i noticed that the ram usage at boot is 190 MB while in LMDE GNOME 64 it was only 140~150 MB.

Does anyone know why it happens and how can I solve this issue? And I also read somewhrere in the forum that the LMDE XFCE 32 use about 110 MB at boot. I find it strange that the 64 bit uses more ram that the 32 bit.

I understand that it is normal for 64 bit system to use more ram than a 32 bit system. For example, from Wikipedia:

The main disadvantage of 64-bit architectures is that relative to 32-bit architectures, the same data occupies more space in memory (due to swollen pointers and possibly other types and alignment padding).

[kei84]

I can only give a guess. LMDE xfce is not totally a pure xfce, (i.e. it uses brasero instead of xfburn, gedit instead of mousepad). I am sorry if I can not give assistance in solving the problem as I really don't know anything about developing stuff for Linux sorry

Thanks for the reply.
I know that LMDE XFCE is not a pure xfce and uses many mainstream apps like brasero, gedit and libre office. But I don't undestand why it uses more ram than the LMDE GNOME edition.

[lmintnewb]

Couple things you can do. Assuming your xfce layout is more or less the same as mine.

click the menu button ... Go to settings ... select session and startup. Uncheck the boxes beside all the programs you don't wan't/need starting at bootup. If you wan't could look up an app called bum in the software manager and get rid of some more unnecessary services that automatically startup. Lower screen resolution or color, set visual effects to none, sounds off. Adjust your swappiness value, I put up a post about it after coming across it. Swappiness is evidently some good juju.

[asymmetros]

My LMD Xfce 32-bit usually starts at ~128-130 Mb's, with MintMenu up and running. Without Mint Menu, uses less than 120 Mb's at boot.
I ve replaced many of the default applications with my favorites but i think this is irrelevand when we are talking about ram usage at boot.
The point is that i did the same as Imintnewb; startup applications and bum, deactivate swap -though i allow visual effects.

[kei84]

Couple things you can do. Assuming your xfce layout is more or less the same as mine.

click the menu button ... Go to settings ... select session and startup. Uncheck the boxes beside all the programs you don't wan't/need starting at bootup. If you wan't could look up an app called bum in the software manager and get rid of some more unnecessary services that automatically startup. Lower screen resolution or color, set visual effects to none, sounds off. Adjust your swappiness value, I put up a post about it after coming across it. Swappiness is evidently some good juju.

I had already done that but it didn't make any difference. It still uses 190 MB at boot.
I starting to think that it has nothing to do with the apps and services that automatically startup.

[rekik]

64 bit OS's use more RAM than 32 bit ones. So if you have less than 3G of RAM installing a 64 bit OS's is not very usefull (unless you use some heavy applications like encoding, compiling ...) . And if you have more than 3G RAM, then 190 or 120 Mega RAM usage is fairly the same

[lmintnewb]

You already used bum too ? Not doubting you ... but that makes no sense. Reducing the number of startup apps and startup services would have to reduce the amount of RAM an OS uses. Even if just slightly, it would violate logic otherwise.

Whatever your issue is, there's a fix for it surely. Just much harder for someone without access to your system or without knowing exactly what you've done to it. To know what might be the cause. But xfce ( a lighter resource desktop ) Using more RAM than gnome ... again makes zero sense to me and is odd.

Seems like if you continue researching it and tweaking around with your OS though. You'll find a cause and/or solution to the problem. I've done mucho to this install to try to slim it down and bend it to my preferences. Which is one of the many lovely things about linux mint and linux. Endless poss for people using it.

Like getting rid of many of those start up services in bum that I didn't need and startup applications. Search for new drivers ? Why would I need that ? If I install something else I'll turn it back on then. Also took update manager off the startup list and set update manager to only check for updates every 5dys or so. Rather than every 15mins like it comes set to default.

Again when I want to check for updates I can just reenable it or manually start it. These are just some suggestions that could add a lil more snap to your system. Either way, even if it's using 190mb or so. Unless you're on a comp that's extremely low in terms of RAM. Not like it's the end of the world for ya. Which if you are ... might want to consider using a desktop that's even lighter than xfce .... fluxbox < Neat lil desktop really.

Also would reset your swappiness if you haven't already from the default of 60. I just found out such a thing as swappiness even existed a couple dys ago. It's supposed to improve general performance on a linux system too. So I set mine at the suggested vm.swappiness=10 that seems to be the recommendation for desktops.

That adjustment just makes sense in improving performance. Since I've changed it to a value of 10. Haven't seen my swapfile used once that I can recall. Anyway when I found out about it. Posted a link to a good how to article in one of my posts about it for other Mint forums people. It's in a thread called "extremely long boot time" ... if ya want to check it out. Posted on the 2nd page of the thread.

Might wanna clear what's in your swap too and then turn it back on. ie: sudo swapoff -a
Then sudo swapon -a

I mean to get the full benefits of the adjusted swappiness thing. Otherwise seems like the stuff that's already in the swap wouldn't be cycled out immediately. Turning it off and then right back on should totally clear it though.

Don't know what's going on. But sure there's an easy fix for ya OP. Just have to figure it out and right off the top nothing other than what I've ( others ) have said comes to mind. Using Mint 10 main ed ( 32 bit ) w xfce as the default desktop. System monitor ( which adds about 7mb's itself ) is showing 159.6 mbs RAM in use with chromium open.

[jeffreyC]

It would be helpful to know how much RAM you have.
Linux uses more RAM if you have more to use, it pre caches apps so that they start faster.
Since 64 bit is intended to work with 4 gb and more it is likely to use more in that way.

[lmintnewb]

Sounds like a good possible solution here is to use a 32bit version of Mint instead. Though don't know if that fits into what you prefer. Ya no doubt already know 32bit software will run fine on a 64bit system, shrugs. Just another option for you to consider.

[kei84]

I'm using a 2GB ram notebook. I prefer using 64 bit because the performance is better if compared to 32 bit in this notebook.

The 190 MB at boot is not really a problem. But I'm really curious to know why this is happening. I'm only have network-manager, power-manager and policy kit at startup. I even unistalled pulse-audio (as always).

[nunol]

Try Mint XFCE in Virtualbox and check it's RAM usage, compare with what you get on bare metal.

[lmintnewb]

2GB's of RAM ... ya got plenty. Is kind of a weird thing though. Could I take the chance to ask why everyone wants to get rid of pulseaudio ? Keep seeing it mentioned. Being a newb ... wondering if I should figure out how to get rid of it too. Is it a resource hog or problem child or what ?

Sounds like you've got things mucho slimmed down already. I don't understand why a release using gnome would beat out one with xfce either. People mention 64bit using more RAM etc. Which I know you're comparing 64 bit to 64 bit there. So am at a loss as to why it would be. Sheesh maybe try the 64 bit lmde and install xfce as desktop ... See whatcha get in terms of bottomline RAM ?

But with 2gb's anyway. Doing all of that would just be dumping time and experimenting I guess. Did you check it's startup RAM use before you started uninstalling stuff, like pulseaudio ?

(edit) Seems like one time I started uninstalling stuff to try to slim things down and it actually added to the startup RAM I was using. Are you sure you purged pulseaudio correctly ? Did a bit of digging around cause now I'm interested in the PA topic. Found this by mads.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... io#p409483

Which it's for uninstalling PA in Mint 10 main. But has a link to how to in lmde too. Seems like it's an involved process apparently. Just saying if you didn't get rid of PA and all it's dependencies or whatever. Might actually add to overhead in your RAM. Would think stuff could still be starting up or blahblahblah.

I'm going to leave it alone. Since everything is working ok and it'd be fixing summin that isn't broken. Unless I could get some noticeable benefit out of getting rid of PA. That time when I somehow added to RAM usage by trying to uninstall stuff. Ended up having to do yet another fresh install to get it back down to where it was ... no thanks.

[kei84]

2GB's of RAM ... ya got plenty. Is kind of a weird thing though. Could I take the chance to ask why everyone wants to get rid of pulseaudio ? Keep seeing it mentioned. Being a newb ... wondering if I should figure out how to get rid of it too. Is it a resource hog or problem child or what ?

Sounds like you've got things mucho slimmed down already. I don't understand why a release using gnome would beat out one with xfce either. People mention 64bit using more RAM etc. Which I know you're comparing 64 bit to 64 bit there. So am at a loss as to why it would be. Sheesh maybe try the 64 bit lmde and install xfce as desktop ... See whatcha get in terms of bottomline RAM ?

But with 2gb's anyway. Doing all of that would just be dumping time and experimenting I guess. Did you check it's startup RAM use before you started uninstalling stuff, like pulseaudio ?

(edit) Seems like one time I started uninstalling stuff to try to slim things down and it actually added to the startup RAM I was using. Are you sure you purged pulseaudio correctly ? Did a bit of digging around cause now I'm interested in the PA topic. Found this by mads.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... io#p409483

Which it's for uninstalling PA in Mint 10 main. But has a link to how to in lmde too. Seems like it's an involved process apparently. Just saying if you didn't get rid of PA and all it's dependencies or whatever. Might actually add to overhead in your RAM. Would think stuff could still be starting up or blahblahblah.

I'm going to leave it alone. Since everything is working ok and it'd be fixing summin that isn't broken. Unless I could get some noticeable benefit out of getting rid of PA. That time when I somehow added to RAM usage by trying to uninstall stuff. Ended up having to do yet another fresh install to get it back down to where it was ... no thanks.

I always unistall PA because skype doesn't work with it. And my system runs smoother without PA.
After unistalling PA tha RAM usage at boot is now 187MB. Like you said, I have plenty of memory so not big deal. But I am trying to find out what is causing this odd behavior.

[dritzominous]

I have this same problem. LMDE XFCE, 64 bit. 4 GB of ram, and this sucker is dragging out 340 MB with barely anything running. Though, firefox is running at 115 MiB...

Still, this shouldn't be happening. I haven't even installed compiz, and I'm getting this kinda crappy performance? I mean, sure, the menus and program launches come in a flash, but why the high ram usage?

It climbs drastically during uptime too. I ran a virtual machine for a few minutes, and even after I had shut it down the machine had jumped up to 500 some MB. confused? Just 2 hours of uptime, and this???!!

This really needs to be addressed by the developers. This is an issue.

I am so sad. Heck, I might as well pull out my ole mint 9 disk.

[nunol]

I run Mint XFCE 32bit and at boot is around 100-110MB on bare metal and about 93MB on Virtualbox. Didn't test 64bit version...

[kei84]

Well, so it looks like it's not a hardware problem since other people are having the same problem.

LMDE XFCE 64 bit is using ~190 MB at boot with barely anything running. Maybe it's a bug. I don't know. I think the devs should take a look at this problem.
XFCE using more ram than GNOME, it's really weird.

[dritzominous]

Yes, the devs should look into this.

Anywho, tomorrow I'm going to install gnome and compare performance.

[lmintnewb]

Might just be caching or reserving some of your RAM too. Doubt it's the end of the world guys. Esp you folks with 19 million mbs of installed RAM. I switched to gnome as default today myself. Cause the RAM difference wasn't all that massive with using xfce anyway.

I like the gnome keyboard shortcuts. Still keeping xfce and fluxbox anyway. Gotta luv linux for many reasons. One being you can have a ton of DE's if ya want them. I'm on a box with a massive 512mbs and am not sweating RAM usage as much as you folks, lol.

I'm too lazy to go down to a local comp store and buy a ram stick out of the used bin. Crack the case and stick it into a mobo slot, lol. Too much work ... Mint's running fine with 512 mb's anyway. Performing as fast or faster as the Windows OS on another partition. I can do more with Mint 10 main out of the box than with the M$ crap and it's taking up less than 1/2 the drive space as M$crewed.

lol ... most the progs I have installed for windows are the 3,133 mandatory security apps ya have to have with their software.

Can't resist the opportunity to take some well earned shots at M$ fella's sorry.

Either way with a 64bit system. Would think operations and stuff would be done faster regardless. More info is being transfered and dealt with at any one time. So unless you're seeing performance issues. Really wouldn't loose sleep guys. Just a newb opinion though. I'm sure you'll work things out till it fits whatcha want.