this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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5GB memory usage idle (self.linux)
submitted 1 week ago by goofsqueak to c/linux@lemmy.ml
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

**NOTE: i have only used linux for about a year or so and im not a power user, im basically a tired windows user but i know more stuff than most beginners i feel like? like not a lot more but a little bit ** so when i don't have anything open my memory usage is like 4-5GB out of 16, which makes it pretty bad when i want to play games (even minecraft can make it so my pc use 99% memory so i have to hard reset, although i might have fixed that) and/or when i want some demanding theming things (like a live wallpaper). "Background services" is using like 4GB and "baloo_file_extractor" is using like 1GB out of the 4. I have done a tiny tiny bit of research and ive found out that baloo is a file indexing thingo, but idrk what file indexing is used for so i don't know if i should disable it

distro: endeavourOS de: kde plasma wayland ram: 16gb of something (i have a prebuilt so idk what ddr it is or whatever)

if you need more info then please say so (i can't show images for some reason)

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[–] OhmeHose@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You should read into zram, It's a very fast compressing method that will help you leverage some ram space. With your 16gb ram you could compress 8gb with a normal 2x compression rate. That would "net" you around 20gb usable ram space. With basically non existing performance penalties. You can also opt to compress all of your 16gb.

In layman's terms it's like downloading more ram. But it won't help you get rid of your source problem.

[–] Mihies@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Non existing performance penalties?

Srsly? They might not be huge, but there are still some, or is compression/decompression for free?

[–] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It will still be faster than hitting the drives, whether that is a hard drive or nvme ssd. The compression code is highly optimized.

[–] OhmeHose@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, it's quite amazing. I needed it for playing star citizen on Linux. It needs 48gb minimum on Linux and I had only 32gb. So I zram'ed 50% and was granted 50fps instead of 5.

But the higher the compression factor, the more perf. Penalty you'll get. 2x is very very easy on the CPU.