On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 07:27:14PM -0400, Ralph Boland wrote: > > Since I am doing practically nothing, who is using all this memory? > Can I turn some of if off? I suspect that a chunk of that ram usage is for file buffers. Use the command 'free' to get a better idea of actual ram usage. Using all of the system ram is a good thing, but using swap is not. If after an hour of regular computer use you have more then a few MB of swap in use then you know that a ram upgrade will benefit you. Ubuntu by default uses Gnome. Gnome uses lots of memory. On my Debian/Etch system Gnome is using almost half of the 140MB of ram actually in use. Because of the way Gnome is built with its many libraries loading even a single Gnome app will load many of those libraries using more ram then you expect. Gnome is not a good environment for systems with small ammounts of ram. Ubuntu also has an XUbuntu variant which uses the XFCE X11 desktop environment. It requires less ram. You can convert your Ubuntu system to use XFCE. From http://www.xubuntu.org/get Install Xubuntu from Ubuntu If you have an existing Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu installation, it is possible to install Xubuntu and retain your current installation. To do so, just go into Synaptic (or Adept if you use Kubuntu) and install the xubuntu-desktop package. There you are! Next time you login, you can choose Xubuntu from the Session menu on the login screen. -- sg