I was using FreeMemory on Mountain Lion, but I am now using Snow Leopard. How can I free up all inactive memory?
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Free Memory for Snow Leopard?
- Thread starter 2012Tony2012
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But it does such a poor job of it!
Regularly, my 4GB RAM goes to 0 and the system starts playing videos laggy and things start slowly, grinding away, even though I closed everything! So rebooting regularly is a real pain! ----------
Typing purge in terminal says:
-bash: purge: command not found
There is no way a SL system with 4GB Ram, and nothing running, should end up with zero ram.
My early 2009 Mini has this setup and, even with several apps running, it never goes below 1.5GB free.
Methinks you have a problem - perhaps a background app sucking all your ram up. Try Activity Monitor, to see what's using ram.
My early 2009 Mini has this setup and, even with several apps running, it never goes below 1.5GB free.
Methinks you have a problem - perhaps a background app sucking all your ram up. Try Activity Monitor, to see what's using ram.
Just another voice saying "you neither need nor want to free up Inactive Memory". Inactive Memory is a Good Thing, and will be released if needed by "Active" Memory.
IF you are having some problem where memory is being completely used up, then that is something different that needs to be fixed, rather than placated by purging memory.
Here is how it goes.....I do a complete reboot and have heaps of FREE RAM! Then I began doing tasks, e.g emailing and loading webpages that run videos, at times I have 15+ videos loading at the same time....and slowly and surely, my resources and RAM disappear. If I close all Apps and Browser windows, heaps of RAM is "GONE" and my iMac is sluggish and slow to load new Apps, so only solution for me is to do a complete reboot to completely regain all resources and RAM again! It's obvious to me that MacOS cannot release the RAM properly...never happened on MS Windows, but happens on my iMac!
Now I know why there are so many FREE RAM Apps for the iMac!!!
But it does such a poor job of it!
It only does a poor job of it from a Windows viewpoint. From a UNIX viewpoint, it does it rather well.
Here is how it goes.....I do a complete reboot and have heaps of FREE RAM! Then I began doing tasks, e.g emailing and loading webpages that run videos, at times I have 15+ videos loading at the same time....and slowly and surely, my resources and RAM disappear. If I close all Apps and Browser windows, heaps of RAM is "GONE" and my iMac is sluggish and slow to load new Apps, so only solution for me is to do a complete reboot to completely regain all resources and RAM again! It's obvious to me that MacOS cannot release the RAM properly...never happened on MS Windows, but happens on my iMac!
Now I know why there are so many FREE RAM Apps for the iMac!!!
Just for interest's sake, how many pageouts do you get before having to reboot?
Well UNIX is terrible then....viewing multiple videos from websites, and using the iMac normally, multitasking etc, and then it "runs out" of RAM and doesn't release it properly, even after web browsers and Apps are closed, forcing me to do a reboot to reclaim the RAM properly! That exposes some serious
RAM/Resources problems in MacOS!----------
Mbs worth!
Both windows and linux have much better memory management than OS X in my experience. In recent years apples memory management has been downright atrocious.
Once you understand how OS X's memory management work, you see why it does what it does and that Windows and Linux have a rather backwards archaic to them.
I understand exactly how it works. The fact of the matter is that OS X needs the most ram of the 3 to run smoothly. That makes it the worst of the three.
Most ram of the three? Boot boot Windows 7 take about 700MB and Snow Leopard takes about 400MB. Linux can take as little as a few kilobytes and Ubuntu is around 500MB for a default installation. Mac OS X is designed to use the ram because it's developer's follow the tried and tested "free ram is wasted ram" method.
Windows 7 can run on 512mb so the 700mb is not true. It only uses that much if you have a lot of ram so it prefetches your most used programs.
That's on the same system with 4GB of ram. Snow Leopard can run on 512MB of ram as well. Even it and Windows 7 can run on 128MB of ram. Windows 7's prefetching is no different than Mac OS X's disk/file caching. Just a lot less flexible and intelligent in its design.
You really worry about these things, don't you?
Memory management on MacOS X works just as intended. Inactive memory is there for a reason; freeing it doesn't do you any good. Free memory doesn't do anything useful.
Here is how it goes.....I do a complete reboot and have heaps of FREE RAM! Then I began doing tasks, e.g emailing and loading webpages that run videos, at times I have 15+ videos loading at the same time....and slowly and surely, my resources and RAM disappear. If I close all Apps and Browser windows, heaps of RAM is "GONE" and my iMac is sluggish and slow to load new Apps, so only solution for me is to do a complete reboot to completely regain all resources and RAM again! It's obvious to me that MacOS cannot release the RAM properly...never happened on MS Windows, but happens on my iMac!
Now I know why there are so many FREE RAM Apps for the iMac!!!
Which model iMac do you have? Ever thought about maxing the RAM?
I strongly disagree due to PERSONAL EXPERIENCE! In MS Windows when I load 12+ webpages with videos in them, MS Windows runs smooth and I never run into any RAM running out issues, however in OSX, it constantly runs out of RAM and starts grinding the hard drive, forcing me to reboot or clear RAM, and then OSX runs smooth again for awhile until it all starts again!
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Your comment "freeing it doesn't do you any good" proves to me you are ignorant and have NO IDEA what you are talking about....because before I free the RAM or reboot, my iMac runs sluggish, paging out etc, EVEN WHEN ALL APPS ARE CLOSED....and once I free RAM or Reboot, it runs smoothly again with no pageouts etc!
You really need to do some more homework before you comment again, seriously!
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iMac 2007, 4GB RAM! Runs smooth and well ONCE rebooted and RAM been freed. However, after watching 12+ videos on webpages, and loading some Apps etc, and even AFTER closing ALL Apps and Web Browsers, it runs like a pig, paging out and running on empty! This never ever happened to me when I was running MS Windows or Debian and Ubuntu Linux. This only happens to me on my iMac which proves to me that OSX is flawed when it comes to memory management!
I, as well as many others' personal experiences as well as many white papers, state and know that OS X's memory management is superior to Windows. I often have 20 tabs in both Firefox and Safari open as well as an XP virtual machine and iTunes. All on the same machine as you with 4GB. It runs very well. Upon opening about ten tabs in just Firefox in boot canp Windows 7, the machine starts to crawl.
You refuting the notion of "freeing ran doesn't do anything" shows that you happen to know very little to nothing about how UNIX systems manage memory. I suggest you read up on the subject on the BSD/Darwin and Apple developer websites. That way you'll know what it's doing and why it's doing that. You blindly proclaiming that it's bad is a trend that has plagued human history for centuries and is still plaguing it. Go and become educated in the subject before you denounce it.
I do not need to read about anything, personal experience proves to me that Linux and MS Windows do NOT have this RAM issue, but OSX does. The proof is in the pudding.
I can do the exact same activity on Linux and MS Windows and not encounter the issue, but on OSX it happens, no need to read any subject on anything, the proof and evidence is clear.
Your personal experience still goes against many others' as well as my own. It also defies many white papers. Still yet, you're making the same mistakes that have plagued human history. Blindly denouncing and refusing to educate yourself. I urge you to not go into politics. Lastly, I'm rather sure that you're no just trying to get more attention about this subject by further dragging it along to satisfy some odd need.
PS: Your pudding sucks. I've had better SnackPaks than yours.
I believe you are in denial due to pride and being so defensive about OSX, it's a form of brainwashing and conditioning...you cannot bring yourself to admit that OSX has an issue.
