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Conceptually speaking, there are only three types of memory:
- Kernel memory: memory needed by the OS to manage itself
- Private memory: memory used by user programs
- Shared memory: memory that can be used by multiple programs simultaneously
There are many types of memory statistics available. They are all called differently depending on the OS and the type of monitoring tools. Reading and understanding is a matter of figuring out which of the three types is shown where. The biggest confusion comes from counting the same memory multiple times. (Ie Shared memory should be counted only once)