Name

free — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

free [options]

The free command displays memory usage in kilobytes:

$ free
          total      used    free shared buffers cached
Mem:     523812    491944   31868      0   67856 199276
-/+ buffers/cache: 224812  299000 
Swap:    530104         0  530104

The Linux kernel reserves as much memory as possible for caching purposes, so your best estimate of free RAM in the preceding output is in the buffers/cache row, free column (i.e., 299000K).

Useful options

-s N

Run continuously and update the display every N seconds.

-b

Display amounts in bytes.

-m

Display amounts in megabytes.

-t

Add a totals row at the bottom.

-o

Don’t display the “buffers/cache” row.

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