Open Source Summit Europe 2024

Considering a context where the hardware platform disposes of a restricted amount of RAM, developers need to understand how this resource is managed and consumed by the operating system and the applications running on it. In such situations, it is crucial to use the right metrics and tooling to identify which components are excessively allocating resources, trim them down, and finally get close to the strict necessary memory usage without compromising essential features. This presentation explores RAM management in the Linux kernel, focusing on how much memory is allocated across different areas and for what purposes. From a kernel space perspective, it will dive into the components of memory reserved in early boot. Considering the user space perspective, the presentation will explain how much memory is used by processes, both individually and collectively.