[ale] Fedora Core 5 memory management?

[JK]

J. D. wrote:

>      I installed FC5 on my main linux box (athlon 2800 @333, gig of 
> ram) and have been surprised by how fast programs appear to run on it. 
> I'm thinking the programs I am using (typical workstation stuff) are 
> already cached in ram. It appears to be something in the way the 
> distro deals with memory. I'm not sure if is some kernel option or if 
> it is some kind of (forgive the term) pre-fetch cache.


In general, modern multi-tasking virtual-memory OS kernels cache 
everything, transparently.
This has been true for the Linux kernel since before version 1.0 IIRC, 
is true also for essentially
every variety of Unix (and therefore OSX), and Windows at least since 
NT3. I suppose
the perceived speediness could be related to changes in the virtual 
memory manager, but
probably not caching per se. Anyway, until you use up all available RAM, 
the effects of
VM caching strategies would be imperceptible in terms of interactive 
performance. I'd rather
suspect that FC5 might be tuning various hardware parameters (eg 
hdparm-type stuff)
better by default than earlier versions.

-- JK