The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Regarding Linux Swap Memory

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by arpanroy1987, Mar 10, 2009.

  1. arpanroy1987

    arpanroy1987 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    If we decrease the size of Linux Swap memory, what are the problems we may have to face. My RAM is 512 MB and my swap memory is 350 MB ,I face a problem regarding speed and smoothness of the processes. If u know any thing please reply.
     
  2. Baserk

    Baserk Notebook user

    Reputations:
    2,503
    Messages:
    1,794
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Dude, don't post your phone number.
    Also, you might get a quicker/better response if you posted in the linux sub forum.
    The current swap size should suffice plenty for running multiple apps though.
    Is it too small? Is all that 350MB actually used?
     
  3. faraz_k86

    faraz_k86 Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    swap kindof works as your RAM, or virtual memory.

    but you will get a better response on a proper linux forum, try http://ubuntuforums.org
     
  4. proxima_centauri

    proxima_centauri Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    59
    Messages:
    196
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Why do you want to decrease the size of your SWAP partition?
    Is it possible? yes. It is recommendable, no, especially if you're running a heavy DE like Gnome.

    The only problem you are going to face is potential slow down due to lack of memory to hande multiple processes.
     
  5. arpanroy1987

    arpanroy1987 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thank u faraz_k86 and proxima_centauri.
     
  6. QualitySeeker

    QualitySeeker Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    39
    Messages:
    221
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Hibernation won't work as the swap partition is usually used to store the system state (aka what's in your RAM).

    512MB RAM means the system definitely will use your swap as virtual RAM. Reducing it will likely reduce the overall performance.
     
  7. afty

    afty Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    125
    Messages:
    64
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I would keep the same swap space or even increase it. 512 MB is not a lot of RAM, and it's likely you will need swap space in normal use. Though this is probably not what is causing your performance problems; if you don't have enough swap space, your computer will crash, not just slow down.

    Also, as QualitySeeker points out, for hibernate to work your swap partition has to be at least as large as your RAM, because hibernating writes the contents of RAM out to disk.