Wrong. The memory is held by the page cache. It's thus _not_ free -- it=
's
assigned to mirror a specific area of your disk. The kernel will throw =
that
assignment away and use the memory for something else as soon as you ne=
ed
it.
Whether such memory is counted as "free" or as "cached" is a semantic
difference over which we could argue all night without resolving anythi=
ng.=20
Why does it matter?
> BTW, to most people, the term "cache" is interpreted to mean the memo=
ry that
> is used as a "buffer" to hold the most demanded pages of memory (i.e.=
disk
> cache, L2 cache, etc). However, linux appears to be redefining it wi=
th a
> definition that is contrary to the usual one.
>=20
Umm, I always thought it meant "likely to be required again in the near
future". And that's exactly what Linux does -- the pages which it think=
s
are most likely to be needed again are cached.
--=20
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