Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Neil Bothwick]

On Fri, 1 May 2020 15:04:12 -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:

> I have 3 desktop machines with 32 GB of memory. In all 3 I still have
> swap (32 GB, I stopped using the "twice the amount of RAM" rule years
> ago). I don't think I have ever used one single byte from the swap; it
> always sits with "0 bytes used" when I check top.

% free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           31Gi       3.2Gi         9Gi       5.3Gi        18Gi        22Gi
Swap:         8.0Gi       8.0Mi       8.0Gi

Something's using a little of it here.
 
> So I don't think you need the swap; I keep using it in case I need to
> ever hibernate the machines, bit I never do. Also, it's always on the
> mechanical disks, so it's dirty cheap.

As you say, it's cheap and you're hardly going to noting a few GB out of
a multi-TB disk.

The question was about *needing* swap, to which the answer is generally
no. But the more important question is whether you are better off with or
without it, which is a much more complex problem, although I see no good
reason to not have it and reasonable reasons to leave it there.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WORM: (n.) acronym for Write Once, Read Mangled. Used to describe a
      normally-functioning computer disk of the very latest design.