I'm running Kubuntu 25.10 with 32 GiB of RAM. Even when I have no browser, music player, or other obvious applications open, `free -h` reports about 22 GiB used, only 8.2 GiB free, and 9.1 GiB available. My 512 MiB swap space is also almost completely full. When I open several browser tabs, the system nearly runs out of memory and starts stuttering. The usual system monitor does not show an obvious program responsible. What should I check, and could the small swap size be contributing to the problem?
4 Answers
A 512 MiB swap file is unusually small for a desktop with 32 GiB of RAM. Increasing the swap file would give the system more room during memory spikes, although it will not identify or fix a program that is leaking memory. Check the processes first, then consider creating a larger swap area.
Use a process viewer such as `htop` or `btop`, sort by memory usage, and check what is actually consuming RAM. The regular task manager may not make every process or service obvious. You can also run `top` from a terminal as a quick alternative.
You could also look into zram or zswap, which compresses memory and can reduce the impact of occasional RAM pressure. Configure one of them rather than enabling several overlapping swap arrangements blindly. The system should still be checked with `htop` or `btop` to find out why so much memory is being used in the first place.
The `free` output does show pressure, but the important number is usually `available`, not just `free`. Linux uses otherwise-unused RAM for caches, which can be reclaimed. However, having only about 9 GiB available while the small swap file is nearly full is worth investigating.
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