Linux memory needs

[MerePeer]

I noticed that my Whitebox linux (aka Redhat ES 3) node that has 512mb memory in it and is currently running d2ol has a top that starts like this:

16:43:02 up 2 days, 2:19, 4 users, load average: 0.99, 1.00, 0.99
73 processes: 69 sleeping, 4 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait idle
total 99.2% 0.0% 0.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
Mem: 511968k av, 494956k used, 17012k free, 0k shrd, 60468k buff
352968k actv, 0k in_d, 6992k in_c
Swap: 1044184k av, 768k used, 1043416k free 159564k cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
16788 root 25 0 53160 51M 820 R 98.6 10.3 11:41 0 DockWin.exe
15095 root 15 0 162M 33M 5888 S 1.4 6.6 0:58 0 X
1 root 15 0 500 500 448 S 0.0 0.0 0:03 0 init
2 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 keventd
3 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kapmd
4 root 34 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 ksoftirqd/0
7 root 25 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 bdflush
5 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kswapd
6 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kscand
8 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kupdated
9 root 25 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 mdrecoveryd
13 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kjournald
69 root 25 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 khubd
3550 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kjournald
3924 root 15 0 848 848 572 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 dhclient


And being a Linux newbie I'm not sure whether the 17012k free is something to be concerned about or not? I have 6 terminal windows open or so + 1 firefox browser. The swap space is strictly disk right?
Do other distros use up this much mem?

Also -- how do I tell which version of GNOME is running, and do you know of any distros that have GNOME 2.6 yet?

TIA

[rshepard]

I think you're OK--- The box I'm on right now has a gig of RAM, and there's about 35000k free at the moment. I'm running the same as you, plus 5 remote desktop sessions and an e-mail app. This is on a Gentoo system. Swap is out to the disk as far as I know. You don't seem to be hitting the swap hard at all; if the system's response "feels right", then carry on :thumbs:

[Bok]

I believe the object word is memory 'used'. It's not necessarily in use at this time though, just marked as dirty and will be reused.

The system looks fine.

Bok