Nautilus is hogging memory

lanxu · 2007-11-26 14:01:24

Hi,

I just wondered if anyone else have faced the same problem I have. When I browse my pictures in Nautilus it requires memory to show these thumbnails. I have a folder with about 1000 pictures and Nautilus uses more or less 150Mb of memory. However, when I close the browsing window Nautilus doesn't free the memory. I have _easily_ used all my 512 Mb of RAM just for Nautilus with thumbnailing. I guess this is not normal behavior?

I also have done my own PKGBUILD that fixes many other bugs in Nautilus 2.20 but this "feature" just makes my head ache because there is no fix for it. Was this problem in the previous version of Nautilus too?

pelle.k · 2007-11-26 15:44:25

Are you sure this memory isn't just cached afterwards?
Show output of "free".

buttons · 2007-11-26 17:55:38

Very sorry for being a jerk but...you have 512 MB of RAM and you're using nautilus? or GNOME, for that matter?

Have you tried XFCE/thunar or something similar?

Nautilus is very adept at consuming large quantities of memory. Something like Thunar or pcmanfm would be better. Better yet, get rid of gnome, which uses nautilus to manage the desktop as well, so you can't really get away from its memory-grabbing ways.

lanxu · 2007-11-26 20:23:55

pelle.k wrote:

Are you sure this memory isn't just cached afterwards?
Show output of "free".

I just hope that would be the case. Example: I used Nautilus for some time to browse images. System Monitor tells that program Nautilus is using over 200MB of memory (I have closed all my Nautilus browsers):

lanxu@den:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           503        496          6          0         11        121
-/+ buffers/cache:        363        140
Swap:          494        208        285

After killing Nautilus my System Monitor shows only ~20MB memory usage. This is more like it. Disabling thumbnailing keeps memory usage down.

lanxu@den:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           503        339        164          0         16        138
-/+ buffers/cache:        184        318
Swap:          494        152        341

buttons wrote:

Very sorry for being a jerk but...you have 512 MB of RAM and you're using nautilus? or GNOME, for that matter?
Have you tried XFCE/thunar or something similar?
Nautilus is very adept at consuming large quantities of memory. Something like Thunar or pcmanfm would be better. Better yet, get rid of gnome, which uses nautilus to manage the desktop as well, so you can't really get away from its memory-grabbing ways.

Yes I have. I started my Linux computing with XFCE and IceWM many years ago. However, I somehow shifted to use Gnome and I'm quite completely slave of it now. There are just features I need almost everyday. e.g. Using Nautilus to move or edit files over SSH/FTP-connection is just so damn easy. My gnome uses about 120-150MB of memory when there are no additional programs on. The real memory consumers are Firefox, most big Java programs and now this Nautilus.

Last edited by lanxu (2007-11-26 20:26:46)

finferflu · 2007-11-26 20:37:52

I think you should get rid of Metacity as well. I also have 512MB of RAM, and I found OpenBox the best option as a Window Manager for Gnome. It's really enjoyable, I like it more than Compiz, and everything feels lighter. I had stopped using Firefox because of memory usage, but with OB as Window Manager I can happily use it again.
As for the Nautilus problem, I never had such an issue, so there's not much else I can suggest you...

Good luck!

pelle.k · 2007-11-26 22:21:36

Looks alright to me lanxu. People often go nuts over figures, comparing this to that and often overreact to these things.
Some applications cache memory, the kernel i/o system system being the best example. This is borrowed, and can just as easily be freed.
318 of 512 MB free, i'd say you've got plenty to spare. Of course caching bitmaps can make quite an impact on xorg (depending on what method is used).

I use gnome with 256 MB RAM on my second PC, and as long as i don't do *too* much at the same time, i'm OK. To put that in perspective, my main rig is a c2d with 2 gigs of ram.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-11-26 14:01:24

Nautilus is hogging memory

#2 2007-11-26 15:44:25

Re: Nautilus is hogging memory

#3 2007-11-26 17:55:38

Re: Nautilus is hogging memory

#4 2007-11-26 20:23:55

Re: Nautilus is hogging memory

#5 2007-11-26 20:37:52

Re: Nautilus is hogging memory

#6 2007-11-26 22:21:36

Re: Nautilus is hogging memory

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