[PLUG] Swap or Not?

[Derek Loree]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 21:51, Paul Johnson wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 03:45:05PM -0800, Derek Loree wrote:
> > "Plenty" is a very relative term,  I have 512 MB in my workstation, but
> > I don't consider it to be plenty.  My kids would much rather use my
> > system instead of their own (they each have their own dual boot systems,
> > but mine is faster), so I have at least 4 different X sessions open at
> > the same time, with all kinds of programs loaded up.
> 
> Yeah, I frequently have multiple users logged in and doing stuff while
> I'm playing GTA Vice City in WineX or something.  My machine
> runs as sort of a general-purpose shell system for my friends, as well
> as my personal machine.
> 
> > What I've seen happen when the system runs out of memory is that
> > processes will be killed by the kernel, no warning, just gone.
> 
> Survival tactic, and not a bad one, really:  If something is eating
> all the RAM, eventually it'll gun the offending process.

Better than locking up the whole OS anyway, like M$ tends to do.
> 
> > To recap, having a large swap file with lots of RAM won't really hurt
> > you, unless you are actually using it a lot.
> 
> But even then, only if performance matters.

True, however, I've read that too much swap space can grind your machine
to a virtual stand still.

>   Linux 2.6 has some pretty
> amazing scheduling:  I'm able to do everything my machine does and
> my machine still plays Vice City in an emulated environment than it
> does on any PS2 I've seen[1].

I've read about the changes made to the disk scheduler, the specs make
it look like it will add both Nitric Oxide and turbo charging to disk
I/O system.  So now with 10,000 rpm IDE drives, serial ATA RAID and
super fast I/O in the kernel, consumer grade machines might actually
start to act _really_ fast.  (I have seen very few consumer grade
machines that act like anything I would consider to be fast.)

Good Luck,

Derek Loree