> I have a 60gig HD w2k on 29,635.5 MB and 29,008.0 MB Unallocated
>
> I would like to use Partition Magic 7.0 to put Linux in the Unallocated
> area.
>
> With 1Gig MB RAM what size swap do I need? One thing said twice the
> amount of RAM
> and one said 512k?*
>
It really depends on what you're going to be using the machine for. If you're
using typical desktop applications (and using a recent kernel) you can get
away with little swap. However, keep in mind that the kernel will use swap to
move inactive processes out of physical memory. This can speed up the general
usage of the machine in any case so it's a good idea to have at least as much
swap and physical memory.
This gets debated a lot :D
In the 2.2 series kernels, swap was additive. If you had 512M or RAM and 512M
of swap it would give your 1G of working memory. From 2.4.0 to about 2.4.10,
swap became more of a backing store so 512M of RAM and 1G of swap would give
you 1G of working memory. After (about) 2.4.10, the memory system went back to
the original behaviour (though the code was very different) so 512M RAM/512M
swap again gacve 1G of working memory.
I always like to mention that 1G or even 2G of swap is often proportionally
*smaller* than the 64M that was recommended in days of 540M hard drives.
If you do decide to run without swap you'll need to look at the "overcommit"
options. This lets the OS give processes as much memory as they request
without running into permission problems. This can get ugly if you do actually
need to touch all that memory, however.
-- * The Digital Hermit http://www.digitalhermit.com * Unix and Linux Solutions kwan@digitalhermit.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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