Swap space

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tlmiller
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Swap space

Post by tlmiller »

Thought I'd ask this here, since there was a thread on another forum about it.

So, what do you do for swap nowadays, with the levels of ram that's in many machines?
  • No swap, it's just not needed unless you want to use hibernate, and I'm fine with just using sleep.
    Swap partition, but smaller than available ram. I like to play it safe, but don't need hibernate.
    Swap partition 100%(+) of ram. I like to use hibernate, or have too little ram to avoid.
    Swap file.
I personally switched to swap files a while ago. With SSD's, I see no reason to use a standalone partition, and the swap file allows you to easily modify the size if you change the amount of ram and want to update the swap size.

side note - is there a way to create polls?
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crosscourt
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Re: Swap space

Post by crosscourt »

I still use swap because I dont have a lot of ram in all my systems. Our test system though has 16gb and we could get away without a swap but we still use it for no particular reason(16gb swap). I tend to match the swap to the amount of ram 8gb in my desktop. The old rule of 1.5-2x your ram I always found ludicrous(except when you have less than 4gb of ram,20% if you have 32gb or more of ram). Given the storage sizes and flexibility today with the amount of ram, swap space is probably a moot point. Hibernate definitely but wouldnt go over the same amount as the ram for the swap. Performance has improved so much today that even if youre accessing your swap its nothing like what it was in the old days, when the system would ground to a crawl.

If you use high end apps or get an app thats being bad and using up ram having that swap file comes in handy.

Heres a good article about the topic, https://itsfoss.com/swap-size/

Its interesting as swap space is a topic you dont see much on tech forums any more.
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dai_trying
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Re: Swap space

Post by dai_trying »

I always use a swap partition, partially out of habit and partially out of stability, if a package suddenly goes mad with your ram it will be a lot easier to resolve the issue by having swap space available to prevent the system freezing/crashing. I always have conky running on my desktop with the main machine stats showing so i can see what is being used.
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