Hello. Sorry, I'm sure this has probably been asked, but you try a search for "swap".
No matter what I do--I mean ripping cd's, compiling progs, 14 other programs running, etc, according to gkrellm and torsmo, I never use any swap space. Maybe a meg or two. How does linux handle the swap space? does it wait until ram is maxed out before using swap? If so, it seems like very little swap would be needed for a desktop system w/ 512mb ram. I know I've read that double your physical memory is a good size for swap, but with 512megs doesn't a gig of swap seem silly? I guess I really don't know how swap works, maybe big swap would be necessary for a server, but for a desktop system? Any input would be much appreciated.

try to copy a dvd movie or something...I could imagine your swap is needed and in my system, with 256 megs of ram, I do use swap from time to time when ripping some discs or doing some other fancy stuff..

"swap = double the amount of your ram" doesn't mean that if you have 4 gigabytes of ram, you would need 8 gigs of swap it's a bit more relative...for small amounts of ram it is ok (like 32 or 64 or 128), but if you have a nice amount of ram, then you don't need that much swap. of course, I'd say it's still wise to make some - you can have unused swap, but when you really need it, you cannot create it more on-the-fly so when you run out of memory and swap, you are out of memory and swap. better to have it too much then too little..

That's pretty much what I figured. I set aside a gig (which was probably overkill), but I'm not really hurting for space yet, so what the heck.