Re: memory usage on Linux

A lot of people made good points in the comments section of my last posting (Understanding memory usage on Linux). Here are some of the general ideas that were mentioned:

(1) Several comments noted that non-x86 hardware has a different approach to shared memory between processes. This is true; some architectures do not handle shared memory in the same way as x86. To be honest, I don't know which platforms those are, so I'm not going to even try to list them. Thus, my previous post should be taken with a big grain of salt if you're working on a non-x86 platform.

(2) Many people also noted that this shared library feature of Linux isn't some fancy new thing, which is completely true. Microsoft Windows platforms undoubtedly have the same basic sharing feature, just like any full-featured modern operating system. My post only addressed Linux because, to be honest, I'm a Linux-centric kind of person.

(3) Yes, I did commit the sin of using "it's" instead of "its". To all of the English majors in the audience, I offer my most sincere apology.

(4) A few comments mentioned the memory size of Firefox. I must admit that I began this article with Firefox instead of KEdit as the primary example, but I was forced to switch to KEdit when I saw how big Firefox's private/writeable size was; KEdit illustrated my point much better. :)

(5) If the word "marginal" that I used confused anyone, then feel free to just mentally replace it with the word "incremental".

Thanks to everyone that commented on the posting; part of my reason for writing it was to see what other people thought, as other people usually know more than I do about any given subject.