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I'm still a novice with Ubuntu, and have converted an old Toshiba L655D to use the OS. I have 3gb of memory installed, and this appears on on the GRUB memtest. But within Ubuntu, looking at free -m when running basic applications I find...

Mem: Total: 738 Used: 673 Free: 59
-/+ buffers/cache: Used: 509 Free: 229
Swap: Total: 2808 Used: 355 Free: 2453

The swap total is the only number cold to the 3000+ MB of memory I have (And I'm not sure what that means). I'm not sure how to put this memory to use. If at all possible. I saw no option in the BIOS to reallocate memory.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ×64

Toshiba L655D

AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-core ×2

2 Answers 2

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I was Looking at you laptops support sheet on the Toshiba Website: http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/laptops/satellite/L650/L655D-S5066

Under Performance and Graphics Memory I See this:

GRAPHICS MEMORY* 256MB-1917MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory

I just subtracted the 1917 from your swap size and it gave me the memory amount of what your output showed. It may be that the graphics card is using this shared memory 100%. This may be due to the Normal ATI drive that would be in windows is not there to manage it.

I would reboot and go into your PC's BIOS. In there you may find a setting to turn of the shared Memory feature and just used the 256MB which should be more than enough to keep your system running smooth.

By default Ubuntu will use the open source Radeon driver for cards manufactured by AMD.

you may want to look at installing the Linux Driver for your Graphics card. Ubuntu has a Guide for this Here. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

You simply need to open the setting menu for ubuntu, Click "Software & Updates".

Select the far right tab "Additional Drivers" and wait a few seconds for Ubuntu to build a list of drivers you can use.

It should looks something like this: enter image description here

Note: I have an Nvidia GPU so you will see different drivers than me.

Make sure to pick the one that has the message (proprietary, Tested) next to it.

Once Selected click "Apply Changes" let it do its thing and reboot.

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  • That's one solution I've seen, but there are literally no ways to manipulate memory usage from my BIOS screen, even under Advanced\System Configuration. The only mention of memory is greyed out and says I have 3072mb of memory.
    – E-than
    Aug 5, 2014 at 16:02
  • Is there a way to update the BIOS with Ubuntu? I can only find executables for Windows.
    – E-than
    Aug 5, 2014 at 16:11
  • Check and see if installing the Official Driver can help your system manage your RAM correctly. I have updated my answer with the instructions.
    – Klyn
    Aug 5, 2014 at 18:34
  • Was finally able to find that screen through the update manager. But my screen is called "Software Sources" And has all those tabs except "Additional Drivers". Frustrating. I'm going to try updating Ubuntu.
    – E-than
    Aug 5, 2014 at 22:16
  • Are you on the normal Ubuntu? Or are you using Ubuntu gnome or like xfce desktop environment?
    – Klyn
    Aug 6, 2014 at 3:10
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Thank you very much for your help Ben, it's much appreciated.

After trying multiple methods, most of which resulted in an unbootable computer and an Ubuntu reinstall, I came across something. From what I can tell the line of graphics card that I use (AMD Radeon HD 4000 series) doesn´t have any supported drivers.

Section 6.1.1.1 and 6.2.1 of the link ben supplied explains that users have had little to no success using the fglrx install or an install directly from AMD´s website. The proposed workarounds also caused my computer to be unable to boot.

Because of this my memory remains so minimal that the computer is almost unusable. I´ll be returning to Windows until I can build a computer optimized for Ubuntu.

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  • I'm sorry to hear that... But I can relate with the trouble I have had with my laptop in the past with linux. Just make sure If you buy a new laptop or desktop make sure you get intel based graphics they provide great graphics support. Nvidia works alright I'd say but its still not to the point that it works flawlessly all the time.
    – Klyn
    Aug 11, 2014 at 4:22

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