Linux Swap Space vs RAM count

[oz]

Hey guys, I'm just wondering how much swap space you all maintain compared to the RAM you have in place on your machines?

I personally have 8GB of RAM and keep a 1GB swap partition in place, but none of it ever gets used at all. None of it ever got used even when I only had 4GB of RAM. I keep the swap space mostly out of habit, and because I have hundreds of gigs of spare space on my hard drives. Sooner or later, I'll probably go ahead and remove the swap partition altogether and continue running Linux without a swap partition.

What SWAP/RAM arrangement do the rest of you have, and how is it working out for you?

[techieMoe]

I have 2GB on my laptop and I generally only have 128MB-512MB assigned as swap. It's really just there to keep programs that need it from balking, and I very very rarely run programs that do.

Some of the more popular distributions (I'm looking at you, SuSE) have ridiculously large default swap allocations, sometimes trying to tie up orders of magnitude more disk space than my RAM (like 2GB RAM and a 4GB swap), and I don't understand the purpose of it.

For my everyday surfing/gaming/programming tasks I've never had a use for swap. Several times I've installed distributions without it.

[elija]

I have 4GB RAM and 1GB Swap space which never gets used. I don't know if I'll remove it as it may at some point be needed. And 1GB disk space is nothing these days!

[oz]

I've heard that some distributions are actually forcing the use of a SWAP space during the initial installation.

Can anyone verify that?

[rokytnji]

On the Asus EEE I have I use no swap with 2 gig of ram.
on the IBM T23 I have 1 gig of swap with 1 gig of ram.
On the Amrel I have 512mb swap withe 256mb of ram
On the wifes Acer Aspire One I have 1 gig of swap with 1 gig ram.

On Mepis installer like for AntiX you can chose whether swap is used or not.
Been a while since I used Ubuntu Installer so can't remember all the options in menu.
On NimbleX I can't remember either because it has been awhile but it is not automated so any swap partition I think has to be done before install.
On Puppy I know you need to format everything before install so there is choice ther also.
That is all I can think of.

[vitalka]

I have 2 gigs of ram and 1 gig swap. In my opinion if your swap starts filling up - BUY more ram. And I have no problem giving up 1 gig of hard drive space to swap since hard drives are big anyway. I don't believe there is a need for more than 1 gig if you have more than 2 gigs of ram.

[MikeTbob]

2GB RAM, just over 256 MB Swap

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2061528 1011348 1050180 0 89904 480148
-/+ buffers/cache: 441296 1620232
Swap: 265032 0 265032

[daark.child]

2GB RAM and 512MB of swap. My swap does not usually get used so the ram is more than ample for my needs (at the moment anyway).

[Hal343]

2 gig Ram-1gig swap on desktop, 512 Mb ram-1gig swap on laptop 1, 64 Mb ram-128 Mb swap on laptop2 Depending on which OS I use with laptop 1, some swap can be used, laptop2 usually uses some swap.

[teenytinylinuxgrl]

On Ubuntu's forums they recommended a swap partition twice the size of your machine's RAM, but I suspect that is a "leftover" from before computers came with multiple gigs of RAM and huge hard drives.

I have 512 of RAM and 1 gig of swap. I don't know if the swap ever gets used or not (how can you tell?).

Amy