free

free displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as well as the buffers used by the kernel. The shared memory column should be ignored; it is obsolete.

Documentation

• man 1 'free' [EN]

Further Infomration

• Free Command Examples (09.01.2024) [EN] @ It's FOSS

Syntax

free [PARAMETER ...]

Parameters

-b, -k, -m,

The -b switch displays the amount of memory in bytes; the -k switch (set by default) displays it in kilobytes; the -m switch displays it in megabytes.

-o

The -o switch disables the display of a buffer adjusted line. If the -o option is not specified, free subtracts buffer memory from the used memory and adds it to the free memory reported.

-s SECONDS

The -s switch activates continuous polling delay SECONDS apart. You may actually specify any floating point number for delay, 'usleep' is used for microsecond resolution delay times.

-t

The -t switch displays a line containing the totals.

Examples

Show the total memory in megabytes

free -tm