Lubuntu 12.10 uses 30% more RAM than 12.04

[Pierre]

Lubuntu 12.10 uses a lot more RAM than 12.04.

The 12.10 ISO in VirtualBox uses 127 MB, which is less than 131 MB for 12.04. However, once installed 12.10 run at 110 MB compared to about 85 MB for 12.04 (in both fresh installs and upgrades). That is 25 MB more unaccounted for. The processes in Lxtask seem to be normal. Please explain...

I am wondering if you forgot to turn off some services or if something should not be running. There is also a few significant bugs (already reported): mounting partitions now require a password in PCManFM (very unpleasant for anyone using a data partition) and PCManFM's Right-Click>Paste not working.

Congratuations for the great new icon theme!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: lubuntu-desktop 0.45
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Oct 20 09:24:18 2012
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release i386 (20121017.1)
SourcePackage: lubuntu-meta
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

If you have both system available, you can try to compare them and find which application take more memory, or which service is in 12.10 and not 12.04. For this, don't forget to enable all the process in lxtask (go to View => check all the checkboxes).
As far as I know, we didn't add new services that take that much RAM. So, it may be one specific process which need more memory in 12.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[amjjawad  (amjjawad)]

On Lubuntu 12.10 i686, it is: 130MB-150MB
On Lubuntu 12.10 amd64, it is much more but that is because of the 64bit as far as I know: 180MB - 190MB

I have Lubuntu 12.04 both 32 and 64 AND I have Lubuntu 12.10 both 32 and 64 on THE SAME machine (P4 @3GHz with 464MB RAM).

[SteVe Cook (yorvyk)]

If you open lxtask you'll notice that basically, everything is just that bit bigger

        12.04 12.10

Xorg21.2 29.9
pcmanfm 9.5 11.4
lxpanel 10.8 14.0
nm-applet 12.4 15.3

etc. etc. 53.9 70.6

There's nearly 17 MB more in just those four.

[Pierre (pierrewinnipeg)]

Lxtask RSS column RAM usage is higher than in reality by 20% to 40%. The top box to the right gives the correct total RAM (and same as the 'free -m' command). So 17 MB might only be 7-8 MB.

The real individual RAM usage for a task can be found by killing it or disabling it so that it does not autostart. Also, keep in mind that the bugs refers to RAM usage on INSTALLED systems.

I agree with Julien that RAM usage should not have changed much (Additional Drivers dropped and 2 at-spi added) in 12.10. I did enable all processes in View as he suggested. I can see that Lightdm is there twice (31 MB + 3 MB) and Getty is there six times (less than 1 MB each), but my knowledge of what these things do is limited. Sorry I cannot help further.

[Pierre (pierrewinnipeg)]

Note also:

My Xorg runs at 10 MB (checked several times). Are you sure about 21.2 MB? That alone adds up to 11 MB to your total RSS RAM. I do not think that it is an 'everything just a bit bigger' issue. RAM usage for Lubuntu has not varied much since its inception or from one release to the next.

[Pierre (pierrewinnipeg)]

It looks like I was right.

I tested the Lubuntu 12.04 & 12.10 ISOs in VirtualBox. Both had 2 lightdm services running. In 12.04, they were both at about 3 MB RSS RAM. In 12.10, one is at 3 MB, the other is at 30 MB.

Lightdm seems to be the problem. It is doubtful that a LIGHT display manager would account for 1/3 of the total computer RAM usage.

Any idea how soon a fix for this would be available in the updates?

Thanks.

[Julian Alarcon (julian-alarcon)]

Reading this, seems like this bug is duplicated from this one: http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/2012/10/lubuntu-1210-review.html