SUMMARY The plasmashell process allocates between 10g and 12g of memory when there is a large amount of RAM available. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Ensure machine has 128gb RAM 2. Install KUbuntu 19.10 3. Start plasma session 4. Start top, and sort on %MEM 5. Go into system settings (this is one of the triggers for the large memory allocation) 6. Check plasmashell VIRT - will be at least 10g OBSERVED RESULT plasmashell should not hog this amount of memory, even when there is lots of memory available. EXPECTED RESULT SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: Kubuntu 19.10, (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: plasma 5.18.1 via backports or earlier stock plasma KDE Frameworks Version: Qt Version: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
>6. Check plasmashell VIRT - will be at least 10g VIRT is effectively meaningless. It is not using your RAM. Is RES high?
RES is not high but VIRT is not meaningless. If total VIRT exceeds total RAM then the system will start to use swap. I have other processes requiring large amounts of memory on this machine, and plasmashell is competing for memory.
>If total VIRT exceeds total RAM then the system will start to use swap. That's not true. MMapped files (which are a lot) appear in VIRT but won't be swapped out. Also a large proportion is the LMDB space which allocates a huge amount but will never write to it. It's never "used" so won't be swapped out.
ah ok- thanks for the explanation.