From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bernd Petrovitsch Subject: Re: [RFC] VM: I have a dream... Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:23:53 +0100 Message-ID: <1138181033.4800.4.camel@tara.firmix.at> References: <200601240211.k0O28rnn003165@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "linux-os (Dick Johnson)" , Diego Calleja , Ram Gupta , mloftis@wgops.com, barryn@pobox.com, a1426z@gawab.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from ns.firmix.at ([62.141.48.66]:54146 "EHLO ns.firmix.at") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751065AbWAYJY6 (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:24:58 -0500 To: Horst von Brand In-Reply-To: <200601240211.k0O28rnn003165@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 23:08 -0300, Horst von Brand wrote: [...] > Good rule of thumb: If you run into swap, add RAM. Swap is /extremely/ slow > memory, however fast you make it go. RAM is not expensive anymore... - Except on laptops where you usually can't add *any* RAM. And if you can, it is *much much* more expensive than on "normal" PCs. - Except if you - for whatever reason - have to throw out smaller RAMs to get larger (and much more expensive) RAMs into it. - Except (as someone else mentioned) you have already equipped your main board to the max. > > You have roughly 2 GB of dynamic address-space avaliable to each > > task (stuff that's not the kernel and not the runtime libraries). > > Right. But your average task is far from that size, and most of it resides > in shared libraries and (perhaps shared) executables, and is perhaps even > COW shared with other tasks. > > > You can easily have 500 tasks, > > Even thousands. > > > even RedHat out-of-the-box creates > > about 60 tasks. That's 1,000 GB of potential swap-space required > > to support this. And after login (on XFCE + a few standard tools in my case) > 200. > But you really never do. That is the point. ACK. X, evolution and Mozilla family (to name standard apps) are the exceptions to this rule. Bermd -- Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services