FreeBSD Ate My RAM
The author explores why FreeBSD reports high RAM usage, explaining that the operating system caches disk data in memory to improve performance. This behavior is similar to Linux and is a standard feature of modern virtual memory management systems.
Why it matters
It demystifies common misconceptions about system resource monitoring, helping users understand how modern kernels optimize hardware performance.
Last month I posted about my journey migrating my site server from an old Ubuntu server to FreeBSD . Some people on Hacker News noticed that, when I showed the fastfetch result, I said I was confused with the RAM usage compared to btop and commented that fastfetch is probably more correct. I decided to enter that rabbit hole and try to understand why reporting free or used memory in a modern operating system is more complicated than it seems.
The article is a technical explanation of operating system behavior and does not express a subjective viewpoint.
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