Frequently Asked Questions

WIP

[Linux] Is Neofetch's memory output correct?

"*insert program* shows different memory amounts to Neofetch."

The correct way to calculate memory usage (and what Neofetch currently does) on Linux is the following:

MemUsed = Memtotal + Shmem - MemFree - Buffers - Cached - SReclaimable

Until late 2016 htop, conky, Screenfetch, Neofetch and a lot of other programs were displaying the incorrect memory usage amount. Almost all of the programs I could find have been updated to fix this but there are still a few programs displaying incorrect usage. Those of you using older versions of these programs are probably where this question comes from.

Source: KittyKatt/screenFetch/issues/386

TL;DR: Yes

[Linux] Neofetch reports inaccurate distro name

It's supposed to be [insert a downstream distro here], but it shows [insert an upstream distro here] instead!

The prominent case is with Antergos and Arch, with lsb-release installed. When Neofetch detects a Linux distro, they look for lsb-release command before searching for the /etc/os-release file. Because some downstream distros mostly utilizes their upstream distro's repository, that means unless they supply their own lsb-release package in their own repository, that means they will use upstream's lsb-release, and as a result, the Distro output will be the upstream one. We had deleted support for lsb_release, but more complaints come right after we deleted it because it proved to be useful in detecting distros (as most distros filled them in properly, see issues/493), so we had to reinstate it.

So, shouldn't you add an exception rule in cases like these?

A good distro will always provide their own lsb-release file, otherwise they will be practically seen as the upstream distro with fancy modifications.

So, is there any workaround?

Yes, actually. You'd have to remove your lsb-release (or any equivalent) package. (That is, if the distro filled their /etc/*-release properly. Contact your distro's maintainers if they don't).