Freeing up RAM in Linux

NOTE: Little clarification, this is not needed at all ,as memory is freed when required.

WHY IT MAY BE HELP-FULL: This clears the page-cache , dentires and inodes.

IT’S TRANSLATION : It may be that you are watching a movie or using a Virtual Machine , a resource hungry process has filled up your ram by caching data and the data needs to be continuously removed  to make space for new data . This is managed by the kernel.

IF YOU STILL DON’T  GET IT: Notice  video in your movie hanging (not audio) while your ram gets cached Or your system running a bit slow ?


1) Stop the process consuming loads of memory. (Check System Monitor).
2) Open a terminal with root privileges .
3) Sync
4) echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
5) echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Fedora 11 Fixing Various Problems

0)  Graphic Driver Problems

– For ATI RadeonHD cards (especially x1250 and x1200)

yum install xorg-x11-drv-radeonhd

if /etc/X11/xorg.conf doesnt exist
yum install system-config-display
Run system-config-display –reconfig in terminal.

Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf

"Device" Section
Driver "radeonhd"
Option "DRI" "True"

– Or Install fglrx (At the time of writing of post official rpmfusion drivers dont exist)

Hence Fedora 10 ‘s kernel needs to be installed .Refer this post

(Make sure that you use correct driver since ati recently removed support for many cards )

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=224519

1)  Enabling OSS
(This is needed for Real Player 11 as it crashes with ALSA)

(In Root /Sudo Mode)

nano /etc/modprobe.d/dist-oss.conf

uncomment line as mentioned

2)  Fixing glitchy sound problems.
There are many solutions to the sound problems listed in http://fedoraforums.org
They mainly deal with time scheduling
Other solutions consist of

– Enable OSS (See Above)
– Install OSS v4.x ( This replaces all the ALSA/Pulse Audio kernel modules)

3)  Enabling TAP in MousePad / Touchpad

– Temporary Measure

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=1

– Permanent Measures

– System > Prefrences > Mouse >Touchpad > Enable mouse clicks

OR

– Modifying xorg.conf

See this link.

NOTE: IF YOU FIND ANY PROBLEM / ALTERNATE SOLUTION WITH ABOVE FIXES PLEASE POST A COMMENT.