> > I have got 16MB of RAM on my machine. Could someone tell me if it would > > still be necessary for me to create a Linux swap partition. > > The terse form of the formula is: > > swap needed = total memory need - physical memory size > > (Forget everything about "twice physical size". That is an evil > prank that people play on the uneducated rich who have bouth > 512 MB of RAM.)
While it may be untrue that you *need* twice the physical memory size, I believe it's true that twice the physical memory size is about the limit of what you can effectively use if you need it. That is, if you have 4 MB of RAM, a 128 MB swap is pretty much a waste. If you ever do anything in that scenario that needed much more than about 12 MB total memory, your system would become so slow as to be unusable. Similarly, if you had 32 MB RAM, 64 MB swap may be usable if you ever needed it. For a single user system, this would probably never be the case. But for a system with many users, it is quite possible. Therefore, if disk space is plentiful on your system, I always would allocate around 1.5 to 2 times the amount of physical RAM for a swap just in case you need it some day. Gerry
