How can I monitor the memory usage?

I recommend combining the previous answers

watch -n 5 free -m

Note that Linux likes to use any extra memory to cache hard drive blocks. So you don't want to look at just the free Mem. You want to look at the free column of the -/+ buffers/cache: row. This shows how much memory is available to applications. So I just ran free -m and got this:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3699       2896        802          0        247       1120
-/+ buffers/cache:       1528       2170
Swap:         1905         62       1843

I know that I'm using 1528 MB and have 2170 MB free.

Note: To stop this watch cycle you can just press Ctrl+C.

I think htop is the best solution.

• sudo apt-get install htop

This way you will notice what programs is using most RAM. and you can easily terminate one if you want to. Here's a screenshot!

If you looking for a nice breakdown of the memory used by each running process, then I might recommend checking out ps_mem.py (found here at pixelbeat.org).

I know in the comments above, you mentioned wanting a one-line snapshot from free, but I figured others might find this useful.

Example output:

user@system:~$ sudo ps_mem.py
[sudo] password for user:
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

  4.0 KiB +   7.5 KiB =  11.5 KiB       logger
  4.0 KiB +   8.0 KiB =  12.0 KiB       mysqld_safe
  4.0 KiB +  10.0 KiB =  14.0 KiB       getty
  4.0 KiB +  42.0 KiB =  46.0 KiB       saslauthd (5)
 48.0 KiB +  13.0 KiB =  61.0 KiB       init
 56.0 KiB +  27.5 KiB =  83.5 KiB       memcached
 84.0 KiB +  26.5 KiB = 110.5 KiB       cron
120.0 KiB +  50.0 KiB = 170.0 KiB       master
204.0 KiB + 107.5 KiB = 311.5 KiB       qmgr
396.0 KiB +  94.0 KiB = 490.0 KiB       tlsmgr
460.0 KiB +  65.0 KiB = 525.0 KiB       rsyslogd
384.0 KiB + 171.0 KiB = 555.0 KiB       sudo
476.0 KiB +  83.0 KiB = 559.0 KiB       monit
568.0 KiB +  60.0 KiB = 628.0 KiB       freshclam
552.0 KiB + 259.5 KiB = 811.5 KiB       pickup
  1.1 MiB +  80.0 KiB =   1.2 MiB       bash
  1.4 MiB + 308.5 KiB =   1.7 MiB       fail2ban-server
888.0 KiB +   1.0 MiB =   1.9 MiB       sshd (3)
  1.9 MiB +  32.5 KiB =   1.9 MiB       munin-node
 13.1 MiB +  86.0 KiB =  13.2 MiB       mysqld
147.4 MiB +  36.5 MiB = 183.9 MiB       apache2 (7)
---------------------------------
                        208.1 MiB
=================================

 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

The only part I don't like is the fact that the script claims to require root privileges. I haven't had an opportunity yet to see exactly why this is the case.