To see the amount of memory that is free on your computer, you can use the free command. This will show you the amount of memory that you have total, as well as how much is being used. Using the free command with no flags will show you the amount in bytes.
[~]# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2097152 473032 1624120 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 473032 1624120
Swap: 0 0 0
Using the -m flag will show you the amount in MB.
[~]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2048 463 1584 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 463 1584
Swap: 0 0 0
Know of more ways to find your memory usage or other ways to use free? Let us know in the comments!
Chris September 20th, 2011
Posted In: How To
Tags: available, free, free command, free shared buffers, Linux, Linux computer, memory, ram