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Tyre MacAdmin · Nov 12, 2003, 03:58 PM

On the pc there is such a program that frees up memory in ram... I've got one of those called "memclnr". Is there a stand alone application like this for Mac OS X?

typoon · Nov 12, 2003, 04:10 PM

Don't think you need this for OS X since the Memory Management Scheme is better than Windows.

Tomster · Nov 12, 2003, 04:13 PM

You don't really need to do so. The operating system takes care of that. However, if you want to refresh the active/inactive memory, I found that manually executing the weekly maintenance script does this.

In the terminal : sudo sh /etc/weekly

Again, not necessary, but doesn't hurt.

iohead · Nov 12, 2003, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by typoon:
Don't think you need this for OS X since the Memory Management Scheme is better than Windows.

What makes you say that OS X memory management is better than Windows?

-A

mcsjgs · Nov 12, 2003, 06:22 PM

Is there any doubt?

MindFad · Nov 12, 2003, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by iohead:
What makes you say that OS X memory management is better than Windows?

-A

Use both of them!

Not that they're both strong. Management/multitasking/whatever�my Mac multitasks like a champ.

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 12, 2003, 10:36 PM

Originally posted by iohead:
What makes you say that OS X memory management is better than Windows?

-A

Well you really don't really need to worry about how much RAM you are using on the OS X side do you? I have never at least.

Hop Pocket · Nov 13, 2003, 12:57 AM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Well you really don't really need to worry about how much RAM you are using on the OS X side do you? I have never at least.

Please explain how then the Windows XP user must then worry about RAM usage in a way that is different from that of OSX.

Omitting of course, completely subjective arguments.

cpac · Nov 13, 2003, 02:27 AM

bottom line?

we're mostly mac users, and none of us need to clean up our memory.

If you need to do that in Windows, as the original poster suggested by asking if there was an equivalent program, then Windows is necessarily less good at memory management - otherwise, like with a Mac, such a program would be unnecessary.

wataru · Nov 13, 2003, 02:45 AM

Do a search for some memory management-related threads in these forums. There is a lot of good information, and it would be a waste of time for me to try to repeat it all since I'm no expert myself. But the bottom line is that nothing is required of you to keep your memory working well.

If you insist, I suggest MacJanitor. It's a GUI wrapper for the *nix cron scripts; one of them gets rid of used-but-inactive RAM.

Carlos7 · Nov 13, 2003, 02:51 AM

My friends who use Windows regularly have to restart their computers due to the OS getting sluggish. One specifically said that 10 days is about the maximum that is system can stay running without getting sluggish. He uses XP Pro.

My AIM buddies have sometimes been surprised to see that I have been connected for a month. (This was when I had a more reliable internet connection then my current DSL.)

Certainly, this is not definitive proof, but it is a bit suggestive of something.

Hop Pocket · Nov 13, 2003, 09:08 PM

Originally posted by Carlos7:
[B]My friends who use Windows regularly have to restart their computers due to the OS getting sluggish. One specifically said that 10 days is about the maximum that is system can stay running without getting sluggish. He uses XP Pro.

I use XP as well, and it never gets sluggish such that a reboot must fix it. On both my OSX and XP installations, sometimes they both get sluggish. A simple log out and log back in fixes things on either system. Restarting is unnecessary.

As to why it's happening? Simple -- programs outside of the OS. Bittorrent would be an obvious culprit, but there are others as well.

Hop Pocket · Nov 13, 2003, 09:11 PM

Originally posted by cpac:
bottom line?

we're mostly mac users, and none of us need to clean up our memory.

If you need to do that in Windows, as the original poster suggested by asking if there was an equivalent program, then Windows is necessarily less good at memory management - otherwise, like with a Mac, such a program would be unnecessary.

I would argue that windows XP users also do not have to 'clean up' their memory. It's a common myth that XP is crappy at memory management. That is not true.

However, I am super happy that OSX's memory management has progressed leaps and bounds past what it was in OS9.

I remember seeing a friend of mine struggle with allocating memory to a program in OS9. That is staggeringly retarded -- forcing a user to be intimately involved with memory availability for particular applications. I'm glad that many such things have changed in the OSX migration.

dharknes · Nov 14, 2003, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by Hop Pocket:
I would argue that windows XP users also do not have to 'clean up' their memory. It's a common myth that XP is crappy at memory management. That is not true.

However, I am super happy that OSX's memory management has progressed leaps and bounds past what it was in OS9.

I remember seeing a friend of mine struggle with allocating memory to a program in OS9. That is staggeringly retarded -- forcing a user to be intimately involved with memory availability for particular applications. I'm glad that many such things have changed in the OSX migration.

Part of the which is better argument is subjective. Does the user prefer Unix style memory management or VMS/Windows XP style memory management? What's the difference who know... They both do basically the same thing show each application 4 gig of flat memory and map that to the physical memory of the computer. The biggest difference is probably how memory protection is handled. Windows allows for more code to be run in kernel mode (for performance reasons) then most unices do, which leads to stability problems.

theolein · Nov 14, 2003, 10:46 AM

Originally posted by Hop Pocket:
I would argue that windows XP users also do not have to 'clean up' their memory. It's a common myth that XP is crappy at memory management. That is not true.

However, I am super happy that OSX's memory management has progressed leaps and bounds past what it was in OS9.

I remember seeing a friend of mine struggle with allocating memory to a program in OS9. That is staggeringly retarded -- forcing a user to be intimately involved with memory availability for particular applications. I'm glad that many such things have changed in the OSX migration.

I agree that XP (the NT kernel) is quite good at memory management. There used to definitely be memory leaks in the kernel itself, as one place I worked at I had to reboot the NT server about once a month to clear up those leaks, but XP doesn't have any of those problems.

OSX, however, does NOT need any application to free up memory. The design of the kernel follows the BSD idea of grabbing as much memory as possible in order to improve performance, since stuff that is in memory avoids having to access the disk to load them. Linux follows a different philosphy in that memory is freed after an application has run, and it is not cached in RAM.

I think this is really a non-issue these days. All OSes improve with more RAM, but I don't know of any that are really bad anymore.

theolein · Nov 14, 2003, 10:49 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
On the pc there is such a program that frees up memory in ram... I've got one of those called "memclnr". Is there a stand alone application like this for Mac OS X?

OSX doesn't need this. In fact freeing up allocated RAM in OSX would degrade performance slightly with respect to recently accessed applications. In fact Windows XP doesn't need it either. You would be better served in XP by stopping some of the services that are not needed (but be careful, you can make the OS unbootable if you don't know what you're doing)