Re: X becoming a memory hog

["Sean Middleditch" <sean middleditch Iname com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Adrian Hosey <ahosey@kiva.net>
To: <gnome-list@gnome.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: X becoming a memory hog


> jesse@cmu.edu wrote:
>:
>: I've noticed that X has become a memory hog on my machine -- using 1/3
>: of my memory (64 meg + swap).  Is this related to gnome and/or
>: enlightenment, or is the problem elsewhere?  Or am I moron and there
>: is no problem (X is always a memory hog and I never noticed)?
>
> If you happen to be using imlib 1.9.7, try upgrading to 1.9.8 and see if
> that helps.
>
>      - A
>
> --
> Make input easy to prepare and output self-explanatory.

Also, realize that the memory usage for X shown in tools such as gtop also
include mapped memory: such as the memory on your video card.  So it might
say X is taking 32 megs, but if you have a 16 meg video card, then X is in
reality only using 16 megs of your system memory.  (Which, if you consider
all that it's doing and the fact that all graphics used in X are loaded into
the server's memory pool, that really sounds about right.)  However, things
like Enlightenment, GNOME (especially with said older versions of Imlib),
and Netscape tend to load LOTS of pixmaps into the server, causing it to
take up lots of memory.  Have you ever tried to look at how much memory
Windows itself uses when you have it running along with, say, Internet
Explorer?  Each of the programs itself contains its own graphics in SOME
cases, but in the end, you'll find Windows takes MORE memory, since it does
dumb things like loading ALL your fonts into memory at once (well, '95 did,
I don't know about '98 or 2000), etc.

BTW, does anyone know how the XFree86 server decides which pixmaps to place
in video memory instead of system memory?  Or is that something driver
specific?  The question just came into my head. ;-)

Sean Middleditch