"application A uses a bunch of RAM to speed things up but it'll give it back if another application needs it"
...and other fairy tales
...and other fairy tales
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@deprecated_ii Every webbrowser stores sites to disk when you havent used them for long. If it always has to do that often, tune it so it uses less. The fact it caches stuff is still good
@applejack Look, I shouldn't have to "tune" anything. Managing processes is what the operating system is *for*.
@deprecated_ii The OS manages the hardware and lets the processes exist. Configuring processes is what process configuration is for, though I agree smarter cache limiting would be nice :)
@deprecated_ii OS does things like this with file systems for example. Automatically only uses free space. That's why "free" and "available" are different in free(1), but that's filesystems. Caching a cat pic is completely userspace
@deprecated_ii @applejack There are many ways to solve the problem with different outcomes and sometimes one is preferred over the other depending on the use case, user, etc. The OS developer has to choose the best compromise as the default. If the default doesn't work for you then you can change it.
