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Sadly, Verizon insists that a task killer is essential to maintain free memory. I've tried to convince them otherwise--watching the ADB logs should be sufficien
by aphyr 16y ago
Sadly, Verizon insists that a task killer is essential to maintain free memory. I've tried to convince them otherwise--watching the ADB logs should be sufficient to conclude that the memory manager is doing its job just fine--but no luck. I do keep white killer around for debugging my own lock-prone services, but I can't say I've ever needed it for a published app.
- Qz 16y agoThe pursuit of 'free memory' is one of those things that make me laugh, same as people complaining about programs that are CPU hogs. I mean, we're always after the best memory and the best CPU's only to end up running around feverishly making sure we use as little of it as possible.
- moultano 16y agoI think the motivation for this comes from people's personal experience with disk thrashing. On a desktop, getting to 100% memory usage is a big deal, because it means you're already using a lot of swap. They just haven't relearned their habits for systems without a platter.
- Qz 16y agoOh of course. It's just that the meaning gets disconnected from the message along the way. Disk thrashing happens when you get close to 100%, but people quickly simplify "don't let my memory get used up to 100%" into "don't let my memory get used up ever."
- masklinn 16y ago> On a desktop, getting to 100% memory usage is a big deal, because it means you're already using a lot of swap. But that's not even true for any OS more modern than Windows XP. Linux, Vista, 7 and OSX all keep huge amounts of data cached when you don't need the memory, just because they can and it's more efficient to restart stuff pulling half of it from RAM than re-reading everything from disk. My macbook currently shows 2.27GB Free out of 8GB RAM, but 2.27GB of those are marked as Inactive (they're cache holding old data which might yet be needed again), yielding a total of 5.73GB in active use. The rest can be reclaimed and reused at a moment's notice if need be.
- moultano 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP As of the end of June 2010, Windows XP is the most widely used operating system in the world with a 54.6% market share, having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007.
- nailer 16y ago> On a desktop, getting to 100% memory usage is a big deal, because it means you're already using a lot of swap. No it doesn't. Linux, OS X and Windows all use memory not used by apps to cache storage (and other things). When an app needs more, dirty stuff (that's changed) is quickly flushed to disk and clean stuff (already on disk) is immediately thrown away.
- jemfinch 16y ago> No it doesn't. Linux, OS X and Windows all use memory not used by apps to cache storage (and other things). That's a very blanket statement for a segment of the market that covers only about 5-10% of desktops.
- masklinn 16y ago> for a segment of the market that covers only about 5-10% of desktops. Wait what?
- jemfinch 16y agoSomehow I misread that as "Linux and OSX" and completely missed the "and Windows" part. Mea culpa.
- masklinn 16y ago> for a segment of the market that covers only about 5-10% of desktops. Wait what?
- aphyr 16y agoLucky bastard. How'd you find the dimensional portal to BeOS world?
- commandar 16y agoWe saw the exact same thing when Vista came out and people failed to understand Superfetch. All the moaning and groaning that went on about Vista being a memory hog when most of the usage was Superfetch preallocating memory to improve system performance.
- pkulak 16y agoThe people who sell phones are idiots. Twice now AT&T employees have tried to tell me that Android phones only have AGPS, which isn't real GPS, and just uses cell towers. There are so many things wrong with that, that when you try to correct them, you just sound like an obnoxious windbag and they tune out.