10 ‘free’ Commands to Check Memory Usage in Linux

Linux is one of the most popular open source operating system and comes with huge set of commands. The most important and single way of determining the total available space of the physical memory and swap memory is by using “free” command.

The Linux “free” command gives information about total used and available space of physical memory and swap memory with buffers used by kernel in Linux/Unix like operating systems.

10 Linux Free Command Examples

This article provides some useful examples of “free” commands with options, that might be useful for you to better utilize memory that you have.

1. Display System Memory

Free command used to check the used and available space of physical memory and swap memory in KB. See the command in action below.

# free
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912548     109080          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136632     884996
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

2. Display Memory in Bytes

Free command with option -b, display the size of memory in Bytes.

# free -b
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:    1046147072  934420480  111726592          0  123256832  671281152
-/+ buffers/cache:  139882496  906264576
Swap:   4294959104          0 4294959104

3. Display Memory in Kilo Bytes

Free command with option -k, display the size of memory in (KB) Kilobytes.

# free -k
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912520     109108          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136604     885024
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

4. Display Memory in Megabytes

To see the size of the memory in (MB) Megabytes use option as -m.

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