fc_jeff
18th March 2005, 08:14 PM
A few weeks ago, I started a small thread soliciting ideas to minimize memory usage while running Fedora. I made the comment that it seemed to use more memory than other distros running comparable software and services (Mandrake comes to mind). A fresh boot into Gnome with Fedora seemed to be running memory in the 210meg to 215meg region, while Mandrake was in the 150meg to 155meg region. This made me think that Fedora would constantly go into swap, thrashing the hard drive, while running any programs of decent size.
But what I've discovered with regular usage (and running "Free -m" in a console), and doing a bit of research, is that Fedora is configured to run a service that preloads a lot of stuff (like support libs, config files, etc) that other distros won't by default, to speed up start up times. And I've discovered, while starting up programs and then checking free -m again, that either Fedora or the service is judiciously deallocating unneded stuff from memory, making room for the new stuff starting up, and avoiding going into swap. It also seemed to decrease the overall memory usage as it went. It is as if it is adjusting what it needs to keep in memory, based on what the user is using.
This rocks. And it turns out that with Mandrake, initializing into a Gnome desktop at about 150megs, will continually add stuff into memory, and seemingly not deallocate unneeeded stuff as much as it should, and eventually go into swap more often.
So with Fedora, I don't know if it is the aforementioned service, or if it's Red Hat kernel patches, or some init configuration. But I know it works, and works quite efficiently.
The trade off is that you need a machine that has at least 200megs of memory or so (The Fedora website says minimum for GUI mode is 192megs). A 128meg machine will constantly be in swap (and be very sluggish). Fedora is not a distro for legacy, slower hardware with minimum memory - there are other "lighter", more highly optimized distros for that, like Vector, Yoper, and Ubuntu (I have Ubuntu running on my 128meg machine, quite nicely). But for fairly decent modern hardware specs (200meg + of memory), Fedora is extremely efficient.
And, as with most other distros, the cpu does not have to be a screemer. I'm running Fedora on a Pentium II (300MHz), and it is quite snappy.
I had thought that I stepped into an inefficient distro. But I was wrong.
So kudos to the Fedora/RH devs. :)
But what I've discovered with regular usage (and running "Free -m" in a console), and doing a bit of research, is that Fedora is configured to run a service that preloads a lot of stuff (like support libs, config files, etc) that other distros won't by default, to speed up start up times. And I've discovered, while starting up programs and then checking free -m again, that either Fedora or the service is judiciously deallocating unneded stuff from memory, making room for the new stuff starting up, and avoiding going into swap. It also seemed to decrease the overall memory usage as it went. It is as if it is adjusting what it needs to keep in memory, based on what the user is using.
This rocks. And it turns out that with Mandrake, initializing into a Gnome desktop at about 150megs, will continually add stuff into memory, and seemingly not deallocate unneeeded stuff as much as it should, and eventually go into swap more often.
So with Fedora, I don't know if it is the aforementioned service, or if it's Red Hat kernel patches, or some init configuration. But I know it works, and works quite efficiently.
The trade off is that you need a machine that has at least 200megs of memory or so (The Fedora website says minimum for GUI mode is 192megs). A 128meg machine will constantly be in swap (and be very sluggish). Fedora is not a distro for legacy, slower hardware with minimum memory - there are other "lighter", more highly optimized distros for that, like Vector, Yoper, and Ubuntu (I have Ubuntu running on my 128meg machine, quite nicely). But for fairly decent modern hardware specs (200meg + of memory), Fedora is extremely efficient.
And, as with most other distros, the cpu does not have to be a screemer. I'm running Fedora on a Pentium II (300MHz), and it is quite snappy.
I had thought that I stepped into an inefficient distro. But I was wrong.
So kudos to the Fedora/RH devs. :)
