What size should I make my swap partition?
 

I am about ready to install linux on my 1 GHz G4 powerbook that has 1 gigabyte of RAM on it. I read somewhere that a general rule to follow for swap partitions is double your RAM therefore I would require a 2 gigabyte swap partition. Seems kind of large. Is this necessary? If not, is it reccomended? What size should I make it?

Thanks.

512MB should be plenty.

Swap is not a have to have and is realy only required if you have small amounts of ram or are using ram intensive processes, or both.

With 1G of ram and standard usage you will not need Swap, if you have an OS that forces you to create swap then 1024Mb will be more than adequate.

HTH

Mathew

how much swap space
 

kernel compiling uses more RAM than anything else I ever do. With 1gig of RAM I have never seen more than 700M being used. So, I do believe that swap space is highly over-rated.

Another system with 512M RAM was configured without any swap, no disadvantages seen there.

you guys sure? any other thoughts? i'm about to start install.

thanks.

The swap space rule of thumb was only relevant when computers had a relatively small amount of memory. 1GB is more than sufficient for most users.

when you say 1 gigabyte are you talking about the swap partition or the fact that i have 1 gigabyte of RAM?

The fact you have 1GB of RAM is what everyone was referring to. I know with my install of Slackware 10.0 I chose to make a 1GB /swap partition mainly because I only have 384MB of RAM in my machine. If you have 1GB of RAM in your machine go with what the major concensus is here and not create a /swap unless you are forced to.