

Note that we saw these number in the output of the free command, but they were associated with the Mem: statistics, With top, they're on the and Swap: lines. Where the top output gets a little confusing is in the buffers and cached figures. The same holds true of the used and free figures on these lines. These are the totals for RAM and swap space and should be consistent with the numbers that we get by looking at the output from the free command.

Let's begin with the first number on the Mem: and Swap: lines. While top is one of my all-time favorite commands for looking at performance, even its memory statistics need a little interpretation. Another command that will provide you with some information on how your memory is being used is top.
