this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
113 points (95.9% liked)
Linux
47940 readers
1394 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Swap holds memory pages which are not currently used. Putting them out of the way will optimize the main RAM for normal operations.
It's not a huge difference on a modern fast system with lots of actual RAM but it can be felt on older systems and/or less RAM.
So it's not not having swap that makes the system "less optimal" but not having enough RAM if I understand correctly?
They go hand in hand. Given enough RAM you can keep the swap in RAM rather than on disk to make it faster, but you still need swap.
I'm confused, so if there's no swap, what is the system doing given enough RAM? What's the impact?
Perhaps this can help: https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html