Recently I’ve started working on an all-linux laptop (named ‘algol’, more on this later), and I’m enjoying using Compiz as my compositing window manager.
Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a problem with memory usage. It appears to be connected with suspending and resuming the machine (which works fine, except for this). Compiz memory usage skyrockets on restart:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 4610 dbs 20 0 848m 626m 5068 S 1 31.2 13:40.13 compiz.real
(Yep, that’s a resident size of 626 megabytes, on a 2gig laptop. I’m a Java developer, I’m used to large memory footprints, but when your window manager outshadows the footprint of your IDE, J2EE server, and compiler by a factor of 4, something is amiss).
After a logout / login, the footprint drops to ‘sane’ :
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 14990 dbs 20 0 221m 17m 6552 S 0 0.9 0:00.98 compiz.real
A very fast suspend / resume I just did did not make the footprint grow… I’m wondering if it has to do with big screensavers or something (since last time I restarted, it came back up running a GL screensaver). More details when I have ’em, but anyone have an idea what might be causing this? I hate having to restart my entire desktop environment when I resume.