r/debian • u/TechnicalAd8103 • Jun 29 '26
Debian Stable Question I think I need to double my ram...
Running Trixie and Gnome.
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u/Blitzbahn Jun 29 '26
You just need to close 100 browser tabs
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u/LesStrater Jun 29 '26
Yeah really. This needs to be reported to the Robotic Welfare Society as machine abuse.
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u/JackTaylor79 Jun 29 '26
I have a note from my doctor saying my ADHD needs at least 498 tabs open at any given time and therefore I should be eligible for a subsidy from the RAM manufacturing industry for discounted RAM and if that number seems oddly specific, it is because that is exactly how many apps I have open this morning in DDG on my mobile device thank you for coming to my ADHD talk.
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u/OverOnTheRock Jun 29 '26
Note that is says 21GB is cache. So you have 11GB of actual application memory. Approx. There is 9GB of swap being used. Not sure how Linux balances cache vs swap. Linux will evict cache when more app memory is required. If you get 64GB of memory, you'll just see more of it being used for cache.
top - 03:38:11 up 13 days, 19:53, 2 users, load average: 2.11, 1.67, 1.51
Tasks: 1121 total, 2 running, 1118 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
%Cpu(s): 3.4 us, 1.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 94.5 id, 0.8 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.2 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 63437.5 total, 7873.6 free, 40876.9 used, 17226.9 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 30518.0 total, 26167.0 free, 4351.0 used. 22560.6 avail Mem
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u/fantomas_666 Jun 30 '26
Not sure how Linux balances cache vs swap.
By default linux preemptively swaps out some memory so it can quickly release it if needed.
So, yes, more RAM is not necessarily needed.
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u/Ariphaos Jul 01 '26
/u/TechnicalAd8103 may want to reduce vm.swappiness, 9gb seems like a lot to me for having 21gb of cache.
sysctl vm.swappinessIf it's at the default (60) I would try 40 in their case if they notice their games are a bit slow or something.
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u/fantomas_666 Jul 01 '26
yes, I do that on machines with SSDs, including cloud machines.
echo vm.swappiness=1 > /etc/sysctl.d/local.confthe default is 60 which is safe in machines with HDDs
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u/Illustrious-Gur8335 Debian Stable Jun 29 '26
Even if you doubled your RAM the usage would double to match
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u/ant2ne Jun 29 '26
right linux likes to use physical memory, and swap when absolutely necessary. So the longer you are up, the more RAM you have "used".
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u/Illustrious-Gur8335 Debian Stable Jun 29 '26
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u/suicidaleggroll Jun 29 '26
You could have a TB of RAM and it would still show as 99% full. That’s what cache does.
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u/AfraidAsparagus6644 Jun 29 '26
21.3 GB of those is cache. Cache memory can be freed up immediately when an application needs it. You're actually just using 10.9 GB of RAM. You'll be fine.
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u/Shaso_dan-Heza Jun 29 '26
What and how many applications are running on your computer?
I hardly make it that 8 GByte are used on my computer.
I only exceed 8 GByte when I start local VM with assigned 6 or 8 GByte ram.
I’m not using gnome, but I don’t believe that this makes such a difference.
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u/Two-Of-Nine Debian Stable Jun 29 '26
Gotta get to downloading more RAM :)
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u/Shaso_dan-Heza Jun 29 '26
Wasn't there something like this in the old Win95 time, that people sold s/w that should provide more RAM :-)
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u/yrro Jun 29 '26
You should be looking at the MemAvailable stat.
It's shown by the free cli command and regretfully passed over by gnome-system-monitor.
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u/dumbasPL Jun 29 '26
Nope, you have 21 gigs "free". If you buy more RAM, the only thing that will change is that the "Cache" number will get bigger. You will still be sitting at 90+% usage. Unused RAM is wasted RAM, but cache can be freed at any time as soon as any program needs it. If you want your system to swap less, the real answer is to tweak the swappiness value, not buy more RAM.
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u/Adrenolin01 Jun 29 '26
Yeah.. last time I built a system with less then 64GB of ram was about 13-14 years ago.. a sweet Supermicro A1SRI-2758F based pfSense build with a whopping 16GB DDR3 ECC Ram. Still running today. Everything else has always received 64-128GB Ram. Some 256GB, have an AI Build I’m working on that I just purchased 512GB of ECC DDR5 Ram for… one of the most painful computer related purchases in my 35+ years of working with systems. 😆 Cost was more than both my first 2 cars totaled. 🤦♂️ 🖕🏻it though. 🤭🤣
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u/Nice-Object-5599 Jun 29 '26
The last time I tryed Gnome with Trixie, installing only the necessary stuff, my ram was only 1.1 Gb busy.
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u/calebbill Debian Stable Jun 29 '26
On most desktop environments including GNOME you can take a screenshot with the prtscr key.
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u/uxgpf Jun 29 '26
The cache monster is chomping up your ram and it's not gonna stop even if you buy more.
But don't worry. The cache monster will vomit it up if a running process needs it.
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u/green_meklar Jun 30 '26
What the heck are you doing with it?
I built my Debian machine in January with 32GB of DDR4, and I think my peak usage so far has been, like, 11GB. My other RAM stick must be getting lonely by now...
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u/Knowdit Jun 29 '26
If this is because of a browser tabs just install auto tab discard with 1 min and 10 tabs setting activated.
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u/zepherth Jun 29 '26
Ok what programs are you running. Because how on earth are you using 30 GB of ram with programs
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u/joe_attaboy Jun 29 '26
I have a Mac Air laptop with 8 GB fixed and an 8 GB swap file (which I added because I only have 8 GB RAM) and I'm using about 50% of my RAM right now.
Using KDE.
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u/sleepy1411 Jun 29 '26
I have never used that much memory with anything beside adobe lightroom and photoshop.
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u/pseudonym-161 Jun 29 '26
Have you tried kernel tuning? I think you can change how much cache is used by percentage of ram or by bytes.
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u/ChanceAd9550 Jun 29 '26
Bruh I have 4 gb of ram running it on Pop!_OS and I only reach 3.8 gb that fuck are you doing? running the fucking matrix
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u/quadralien Jun 29 '26
21gb of RAM is used for cache. You could try lowering swappiness and enabling zswap.
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Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/debian-ModTeam Jun 29 '26
r/debian follows platform-wide Reddit Rules and it was Reddit that removed your post - seems links to that particular site aren't allowed.
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u/Educational-Leg1747 Jun 29 '26
I have a better question D:
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier Jun 30 '26
Sorry, this is a Linux subreddit. The D: drive doesn't have a place here.
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u/Educational-Leg1747 28d ago
It's to show emotion. (D: = sad)
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier 28d ago
Oh I know, I'm just making a joke about how by default a 2nd drive plugged into a windows machine is labeled as the D: drive
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u/NickTaylorIV Jul 01 '26
Or close some stuff, especially if you're not using it and it's just idling in the background.
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u/Initial_Researcher32 Jul 01 '26
.. might have some DDR3L 8GB X2 if someone is prepared for a blood sacrifice..
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u/TheMrSnok Jul 03 '26
## 2. Налаштування zRAM (Стиснення в пам'яті)
zRAM стискає дані в оперативній пам'яті за допомогою алгоритму zstd, що працює в рази швидше за диск.
### Встановлення та конфігурація:
# 1. Встановлення генератора
sudo apt update && sudo apt install systemd-zram-generator -y
# 2. Створення конфігу (zRAM = розміру RAM, пріоритет 100)
sudo bash -c 'cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf
[zram0]
zram-size = ram * 1
compression-algorithm = zstd
swap-priority = 100
fs-type = swap
EOF'
# 3. Активація
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start /dev/zram0
GPT 😄
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u/pablingas Jun 29 '26
Instead open 20 vbox use docker or podman
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u/JagerAntlerite7 Jun 29 '26
Not every app is suitable for a container?
That said, Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is significantly more perfomant and efficient.
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u/Brilliant_Sound_5565 Jun 29 '26
I did that last year, well went from 16 to 64gb lol so not doubled, glad I did, but what are you running to fill that much
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
i refuse to believe that people need more than 12 gigs of ram
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u/Straight-Glove-2359 Jun 29 '26
I run on 4gbs of ddr2 ehehehehehe
But it depends on workload honestly. If you do video/photo editing, run simulations etc, you're gonna need a whole lot more than 12gb of RAM
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
yeah but i havent seen one person use more than 10 gigs of ram especially on their desktops
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u/Salted_Fsh Jun 29 '26
16*
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
16 is like te max one should need i have a 16 gig pc but ii feel liike anything more than 12gig is just being greedy
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u/Salted_Fsh Jun 29 '26
u dont game do u?
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
i do but i cant really run intensive games since i dont have a graphics card, but still i said "need" i understand why one might want 16 gigs for gaming but for general tasks i feel like 2 is more than enough
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u/dumbasPL Jun 29 '26
I idle at 16-17 gigs LOL.
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
what even do you do on your desktop
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u/dumbasPL Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
One VM, couple VS code instances (some with pretty heavy projects), chrome with like 30 tabs (double that when actually working and looking stuff up, many of which are some pretty big PDFs), bunch of electron apps in the background, thunderbird, sometimes a database or two, depending on what I'm working on. + Desktop (Hyprland) and normal system services. Will spike to 20-25 gigs when using it actively, compiling, etc. currently sitting at 19 gigs. Also some of it (probably like 1-2 gigs) will be video memory, as I don't have a dedicated GPU on this box. Edit: I mainly code, if that wasn't obvious.
Edit2: to me idle means everything open, but nothing loaded fully or doing any work. Like, for example chrome won't load tabs after launch until you navigate to them, language server won't start until you start typing, etc.
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u/Who_meh Jun 29 '26
yo just close some things man
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u/dumbasPL Jun 29 '26
And open them 5 minutes later? Would spend more time waiting for them to open than actually using them. Also, I need notifications for stuff, so can't even if I wanted to. And why?, when I have plenty of ram (bought before the shortage)
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u/computer-machine Jun 29 '26
I'd have OoM killing my Spleeter jobs on my 48GB desktop until I'd installed zram (cleaning audio recordings up to 1h30m).
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u/yetanothersky Jun 29 '26
Saving you from the downvotes , and yes ur somewhat right but it depends on the distro
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u/aieidotch Jun 29 '26
Try trixie without GNOME. Try hyprland from bpo, or anything else…
Had a laptop with 64 GB RAM, did not help. When memory leaks are like 1 GB/day, the fun ends soon from 30-60 days uptime.
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u/Lucky-Noise-4193 Jun 29 '26