Started dabbling with Linux again to educate myself on all the details, planning on installing Fedora Core on my Thinkpad (2ish GHz processor, 1GB RAM).

Question to you Tech Talk power users -- how much swap space should I set aside? The FC documentation says an amount equal to physical RAM (e.g. 1GB in my case), an O'Reilly's reference manual I've got says never more than 500MB, and one of the guys down the hall says it should be 2x RAM (2GB)

Hardly ever used all the physical RAM on the Windows install or a hacked OS X install -- 1GB or more seems like overkill ::shrug::

5/24/2007 2:38:46 PM

It depends on how you're using it. Generally though you don't want less swap space that how much RAM you have, because the purpose of the swap is that it's suppose to have the same addressing scheme as the RAM, but in a different place. So if you have less, it takes a bit extra processing to see where what is (AFAIK, no actual swap implementation is dependent on this, but this is the idea behind swap).

In OS X for example, with regular desktop use, and having 1.5GB or RAM, i'm only using about 500MB of swap files (swapfiles are in /private/var/vm ), but I only have Safari and Adium open (OS X probably has recently used apps swapped out or wired, in case I launch them again, it speeds launch time).

5/24/2007 2:48:23 PM

I agree with moron ... it depends entirely on how you are using it.

It is often recommended to go twice your RAM mostly because HDD storage is so cheap. Today you are usually looking at 50 cents/GB or less for HD space. $1-$2 isn't much to make sure you don't run out of memory.

I always build my Linux systems with swap that is 2x RAM. If it is hardly ever used, no big deal ... like I said, HD space is cheap and I would prefer it go into swap than crash. Also if you end up using a RAM hungry application like VMWare or such and realize you need some swap space it can be more irritating and time consuming to repartition or add an HDD to get more swap.

Just give it 2x RAM.

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 10:13 PM. Reason : my $0.02]

5/24/2007 10:09:32 PM

i'd listen to eraser...this guy is pretty knowledgeable about many things

5/24/2007 10:17:29 PM

^^
if there's nothing wrong with it being that large, I'll run with it. the "don't have it more than 500MB" spooked me.

5/24/2007 10:59:23 PM