Hello! I’m running Asahi Linux F40 on a 2020 M1 Air, using Gnome. After booting, logging in, and opening a single firefox window, with 3 tabs, and no streaming, my memory usage is 7GB/8GB, with a 3GB cache.
When looking at memory usage by a process in Gnome’s System Monitor app, the program that has the highest usage is simply Firefox with 700MB, followed by “WebExtensions” with 465, then “Isolated Web Co” with 450MB. Below that, usage is insignificant, so I have no clue how my memory usage can be this high.
If anyone has any ideas on how I might 1. be able to check where the usage is coming from, or 2. fix this absurd usage, that would be great!
Thanks!
Oh, also if it helps my battery usage has been about 100% to 50% in an hour (4-6 tab single firefox instance, still no streaming) but I was assuming that it was related to this issue.
Generally, if you have memory to spare you want your computer to make use of it as much as possible. Free memory does little for your performance and aggressive usage will make it faster and more responsive, as long as the surplus is released when it is required by other programs. So high memory usage is usually not a problem unless it is caused by a leak, but those usually take longer to build up and don’t show immediately after boot.
My system is showing the same usage when only running Firefox:
It’s one of the msconceptions that goes around once in a while about web browsers, that less memory usage would be an indication of better performance. It’s often the other way around, since less usage means that more has to be loaded/processed on the fly during browsing.
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Okay so if the high memory usage is okay, then why the battery life lol? (I should probably create a new post about this but nonetheless) I used to get battery life that was just fine on Asahi, lasting me a whole 8-hour day. But not anymore. Thoughts?
That’s a good thing to find out! Do you see one of the Firefox processes using a lot of CPU constantly in the process monitor? Or another process perhaps?
If it’s a Firefox process you may be able to find out which one it is, by closing tabs or disabling extensions one by one, and checking the process monitor for changes.
Nope! Right now the thing that is using the most CPU is gnome system monitor, even that is only like 1.17%! Occasionally, gnome-shell will jump to the top with 2%. But either way, my CPU is not under basically any load.
Yeah, I’ve tried all of those things, both before posting, and just now again. Doesnt make a change to overall memory usage. Like I said before, I don’t think its necessarily a process or anything that is hogging memory, as there is no single process that is using excessive amounts, and the total usage between all the processes has no chance of reaching 7GB.