Memory problems

Solaris

Official something...
On my G4 powerbook I've got 512MB RAM. At boot, with only the Finder and a memory useage app GMEM running in the dock, the reported memory usage is 109MB. If I run some programmes like Sound Studio or Photoshop that can really push the memory usage up to around 390MB. Now if I quit all apps except the Finder and GMEM, the reported memory usage only drops about 10MB. Only one 80MB swap file is created.

How can a quiesent system still be using so much RAM? Top also reports the same memory usage, so GMEM is not in error.

Are there any commands or apps that can flush the memory?
 
It's the filesystem cache; all those binaries and libraries were loaded into RAM and kept there. This is why launching those same programs again should be quite a bit faster. The system, when it needs memory, will free up stuff from the cache. This way, the system tries to use all available RAM when it can.
 
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