about the swap

[venkatesh]

i had installed fedora linux and while installing i selected manual partions and i gave memory for swap is 512 my ram is 512 mb. i think we have to give double the ram. the installation had been completed succesfully with out any problem will it possible to give it now with out formating the disk.

[budman7]

Are you asking if you can put a swap partition in now. You would need something like qtparted, which can be found on knoppix live cd.
But according to Dapper Dan, he has 512 mb of ram and he doesn't have a swap partition. He says it runs faster without it.

The swap partition is only needed for low amounts of ram, 256 mb or less.
You might even be able to get by with 256, and no swap. I haven't tried that though.

[drakebasher]

What budman7 says is completely accurate. But if you wanted to add more swap space, you can do it in at least 3 different ways:

1. resize your swap partition
2. create a additional swap partition
3. create a swap file on a Linux (or Windows?) partition.

You can have multiple swap spaces (16?) and Linux will use them as needed. But like buman7 says, maybe you should try what you have first.

[psic]

What you have is enough. I also have 512 MB ram and I have never needed the swap.

[borromini]

Are you asking if you can put a swap partition in now. You would need something like qtparted, which can be found on knoppix live cd.
But according to Dapper Dan, he has 512 mb of ram and he doesn't have a swap partition. He says it runs faster without it.

The swap partition is only needed for low amounts of ram, 256 mb or less.
You might even be able to get by with 256, and no swap. I haven't tried that though.

I've got a PIII 666 Mhz with 256 MB RAM, and when I configured a fancy KDE, it became terribly slow... The swap space didn't help at all then. But before, it ran fine, and Novell also recommends 256 as a minimum - but I think that's like MS recommending 256 for XP .

[sxeraverx]

I have 256M PIII 700 MHz running FC3 and both KDE and Gnome (NOT at the same time, though...possibly...). It's only a little slow on Virtual desktop switches, but other than that, it's just as fast as when I did have swap. Which is still considerably slower than I'd like it to be.

[jaboua]

I have pretty near specs like you, sxeraverx, maybe I should have tryed running without swap as well? I have PIII 733MHz 256MB with 550MB swap... Do you see a lot of difference? I am dual-booting ubuntu and gentoo...

If you don't have swap, just wondering, what happens if the memory gets full? Does the computer freeze, or does it just clear the cache or what?

[serz]

If you don't have swap, just wondering, what happens if the memory gets full? Does the computer freeze, or does it just clear the cache or what?

Yes. Actually, it will always use as much as ram as it can, do this: open lots of programs and see how your ram gets used...Linux won't free that ram unless it's needed.

However, I'd suggest to at least have a little swap. Just in case.

[jaboua]

I have left my computer on compiling for two days in stretch before, then the swap-space was half-full... But on normal usage it seems like the swap don't get used, at least not to much.

[serz]

That's it. In a normal usage.. the swap will rarely get used. Of course that this also depends on what kind of programs you run.