Swap is turn on but not using any

to sum up below, my SWAP is activiated, but the computer is not using any of the swap memory even if it is freeze due to lack of memory.


Greetings, here' s my problem and I hope someone could solve it for me.
So I had installed Fedora Core 2, everything went find except this little thing.
the computer perform badly, especially if serval application were ran.
my computer is an XP 2400 + w/ 256mb DDR 266mhz, good enough to run Fedora core 2.
so I take a look a the resources, ,the CPU load, is fine.
but the memory is weird, it used all my physcial memory with nothing left , yet it won't use any of my swap memory. I have turn on the swap memory by using
swapon -av
I am sure it is on, it show me the space and stuff. but it just doesn't use any of the swap space.
I have search over the forum and someone said swap will not be used unless the physical memory ran out. But then in my case, the peformacee was unacceptable, it will freeze up like 1 minute then slowly turn load the application.
I only use the internet and email applications, maybe 2 or 3 browsers were open at the same time. can anybody help me on this please?

Linux uses memory better then windows , linux will not use swap until all RAM is used. If you look at the output of "top" the see how much RAM is being used.

-Joey

When this is happening you should try top or ps -aux to see exactly what is bogging down the system. You might also want to disable any unused services or daemons running on the machine. Go the Fedora Menu (start) > System Settings > Server Settings > Services to disable and turn off any unneccessary service for start up with the system.

I will try the suggestion. I though using half of the ram and half of the swap is a good combination since I am still a Windows person

In a perfect computing world, you wouldn't want to use your swap. Your memory is much faster than pulling info off the harddrive.