[GLLUG] no swap installation

[Matt Graham]

> Do you have any comments on installing Linux without a swap partition?

Sure; my desktop doesn't have a swap partition.  Works fine and has for the
last 2 years.  I do have a swap *file*, but it's only 384M and only 40M of it
is in use right now.  (Having 1G of RAM helps.)

> I understand that it is possible to install some distros without swap,
> only relying on physical ram.  This does not seem like a responsible
> solution, since once RAM runs out the system may stop responding.

When RAM+swap runs out, the kernel's OOM killer is supposed to start up and
kill some processes.  If you don't have swap, the OOM killer just starts up
sooner and rarely-used processes don't have their pages migrate out of RAM,
that's all.

In new installations with reasonably fast disks (not laptops) and reasonably
fast CPUs, I'd go with swap files over swap partitions.  They're more flexible
and you won't miss the ~5% performance hit in normal usage.  YMMV if you're
running huge, insanely memory-hungry apps or you're in a situation where a 5%
performance hit on swap is unacceptable.  HTH,


-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
"I backed up my brain to tape, but tar says the tape contains no data...."