[zenoprax]

I don't understand why the default way to show RAM usage on Linux isn't to simply show "In Use vs. Available".

I don't care how much cache is being used and I can't really do anything about it even if I did.

[Ferret7446]

Cache is super important though. Not having enough memory for cache will tank your system performance, even if you have a ton of "available" memory

[zenoprax]

I'm not saying it's not important. It's that I don't have any control over it. Do I have enough "cache" in your opinion? Presently I have: Used: 14.6 Avail: 16.6 Cache: 4.2 Free: 6.4

If I'm asking the question "Is my system starved of RAM?" I am going to look at USED and AVAIL. CACHE is a curiosity more than anything else and FREE tells me nothing.

Also, under what circumstances would I have a ton of AVAIL and be starving the CACHE? That's an OS/kernel problem. If AVAIL drops to zero I can expect to get OOM crashing pretty quick.

[fhdkweig]

atop (one of the many variants of top) reports numbers for "free", "available", and "cache" in its total systems report. As long as "available" is high, I don't worry about the RAM.