Excess processes

[pete smout]

On 17/05/13 09:05, Colin Law wrote:
> On 17 May 2013 08:49, pete smout <psmouty at live.com> wrote:
>> On 16/05/13 21:13, Colin Law wrote:
>>>
>>> On 16 May 2013 17:23, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I just noticed a lot of hd thrashing while was looking at a web page with
>>>> tb
>>>> running in a separate window (of course!).  I was surprised because this
>>>> computer is running linux, not mswin.  I looked at the task manager and
>>>> saw
>>>> lots of processes running that were of either uk or of no interest to me.
>>>
>>>
>>> If the hard disk thrashing you may have run out of RAM.  How much have you
>>> got?
>>> In a terminal, run
>>> top
>>> and see how much swap you are using, if that is more than a few tens
>>> of Meg it probably means you have not got enough RAM.
>>>
>>> Colin
>>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Don't want to hi-jack this thread but I'm following it with interest, as I
>> have noticed my hard disc light on alot after upgrade from 11-04 to 13-04
>> (via 12-04, 12-10)!
>>
>> Does that mean I need more ram?
>>
>> Tasks: 224 total,   2 running, 221 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
>> %Cpu(s):  4.0 us,  2.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 92.8 id,  0.5 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.7 si,  0.0
>> st
>> KiB Mem:   3093632 total,  2288352 used,   805280 free,   274240 buffers
>> KiB Swap:  2085884 total,    88684 used,  1997200 free,   933548 cached
>
> No you have plenty for what you are doing.  You are not using a lot of
> swap and the amount of RAM available for re-use should it be needed
> (free + buffers + cached) is 2GB.
>
> In terms of total RAM (of which you seem to have 3GB) 1GB is enough
> for Ubuntu + Unity provided you do not try to run too much at once,
> and 2GB is enough for most purposes unless you want to have dozens of
> firefox tabs open or go in for editing large videos and so on.
>
>>
>>
>> If so might have to use XFCE instead of Unity if it is becoming so resource
>> heavy ;(
>
> There should be no need for that.
>
> Colin
>
Thanks Colin for putting my mind at rest!

Pete