Re: Swap vs No Swap.

[Ryan Cumming <bodnar42@phalynx.dhs.org>]

On November 22, 2001 08:25, war wrote:
> Why have SWAP if you don't need it - answer that.?

> > BS. You don't use swap INSTEAD of RAM, but AS WELL AS. Moving less
> > frequently used data to swap allows you to put more frequently used data
> > in RAM, which DOES speed things up. (At least, it does if the VM system
> > works properly :P)

Are you even reading what they're saying? Having swap lets you move less 
frequently used data to disk in favour of having more frequently used data in 
RAM. 

Personally, I have more than enough RAM to run a fairly busy KDE2 desktop, 
and still have over 128megs in disk cache. And I still run with swap. The VM 
seems to find about 40megs of data I'm -simply not using-, and it now has the 
freedom to push that to swap so it can cache things that I -do use-. Although 
the more RAM you have, the less significant the results are, you'll find that 
in normal desktop/workstation/server use, the kernel will -always- find 
something to swap out to give itself more cache, and more cache is a very 
good thing. It's not fucking rocket science.

-Ryan