Using meminfo information

["Waldher, Travis R" <Travis R Waldher boeing com>]

I am trying to determine how much memory really is in use on the system for executing commands.  Would going by "Active" be the most accurate?

 

There is 4.8GB of RAM available for processes beyond the OS, of that 3.2GB are in use with 1.9GB free?

 

MemTotal:      6009532 kB
MemFree:        298016 kB
Buffers:        190068 kB
Cached:        4842408 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:        3256152 kB
Inactive:      1919492 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:      6009532 kB
LowFree:        298016 kB
SwapTotal:     8388600 kB
SwapFree:      8388596 kB
Dirty:              48 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:         126552 kB
Slab:           510696 kB
CommitLimit:  11393364 kB
Committed_AS:   198068 kB
PageTables:       3052 kB
VmallocTotal: 2147483647 kB
VmallocUsed:      6144 kB
VmallocChunk: 2147477355 kB