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Linux How To Check RAM Size And Memory Usage

Linux provides a pretty fair amount of information about how much memory is installed and how it is used. If you want to check RAM size there are more than a few commands and tools that you can use.

You can get information about how much memory you have and how much is in use with the following command.


free -h

Physical RAM Hardware Information

If you want information about physical RAM you can use either of these commands. These commands will show you your RAM slots both populated and unpopulated. The unpopulated slots will generally show “Not Provided” for each line of information while the populated slots will actually contain the information.


sudo dmidecode --type memory
sudo lshw -class memory

Note that the above commands will also show you information regarding caches like the L2 an L3 cache.

More Commands for RAM and Memory Usage

You can find your total RAM with the following command:


cat /proc/meminfo  | grep -i memtotal

Using this without grep will give you a ton of memory related information.


cat /proc/meminfo

You can also use the vmstat command:


vmstat -s

Of course the top command will tell you how much memory you have and what is in use.


top

You can also use the inxi command if you have it installed.


sudo apt install inxi
inxi

If you want a graphical tool you can probably just use gnome-system-monitor. You could search for it from the menu or just type this command.


gnome-system-monitor

Linux - How To Check RAM Size - Video