swap and multiboot scenario

[yowwww]

I have recently added a couple of distros to my backup system, so here are my specs:

cel 500
288 mb pc100
30G hd


and right now I have things set up like this:

280mb swap
7G College Linux - lilo installed and boots CL only
6G Elx Linux - bootdisk used to boot
6G jamD linux - bootdisk used to boot
rest is unallocated space

the question I have is whether or not I need a swap partition at all.

I am considering adding another distro - SuSe 8.2 prob (see if I can get apt-get to work in it) Anyway, these are all primary partitions and I want to leave them that way. I know that I can create a logical partition to add another distro, but I would prefer to deal with all primaries as lilo has really messed things up before and I have been forced to reinstall CL a couple of times.

So, what I am thinking is that if I delete the swap partition, it will free up a primary so I can create another partition for SuSE to use as root.

I will have to be careful with SuSE also cuz I don't want a different bootloader installed. As much as I can't stand lilo, it seems to be the only way I can easily boot into CL.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks in advance. BTW, I plan to watch my system monitors to see how much of my swap is used up to give me an idea, but I am not sure how accurate that would be in determining the usage.

[Dolda2000]

You could probably do fine without swap. One of my RAM banks broke, and before I replaced it, I had 256 MB for a while. Most of the time it didn't use any swap at all, and when it did, I'm pretty sure it just swapped out unused pages in favor of cache. And I guess you'll notice if you run out of RAM.

[yowwww]

yes, that's what I was thinking, thanks for consolidating.

something else arises from that however;

if I delete that swap partition, does that change the numbering of my other partitions at all?
it's important to know that since I am using at least 2 bootdisks and probably a third for SuSE.

part of me gets this feeling that because it is swap, it shouldn't change anything, but another part of me thinks I had better make sure.

[Dolda2000]

Nope, that doesn't change anything. Had it been an logical partition, it would have, but primary partitions never change numbering whatever you do.

[yowwww]

ok, thanks a lot.

I have verfied some other things regarding software in SuSE so I am ready to try it again.

[yowwww]

got it installing now