I've used linux for many years now and have never found an easy to understand answer to this question. Say for example I open many programs at once and the system starts swapping things to disk, even after I close every program on the desktop, swap space is never emptied and continues growing until I reboot the machine. Can anyone who actually understands how this works explain why it does this and why it doesnt just clear everything when you close the program using it?
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This is my desktop after a couple days of use and nothing open but the terminal. I have over 1 gig of swap usage and even after closing everything else, it wont empty the swap space. Is it lying to me and there isnt really anything there? Or is swap really being used (for nothing?) and what would happen if I max out? I am confident this is not a memory leak of any kind as I've encountered this for many years and across many different desktop environments, this is a residual memory thing related to swap that keeps creeping up. Thanks.
This is my desktop after a couple days of use and nothing open but the terminal. I have over 1 gig of swap usage and even after closing everything else, it wont empty the swap space. Is it lying to me and there isnt really anything there? Or is swap really being used (for nothing?) and what would happen if I max out? I am confident this is not a memory leak of any kind as I've encountered this for many years and across many different desktop environments, this is a residual memory thing related to swap that keeps creeping up. Thanks.
Statistics: Posted by Chaussettes — 2024-08-27 01:28