What is swap for?
• As we’ll see, there are basically four different purposes for swap : • Some programs really are memory-consuming. Extra memory might come in handy. Optimizing memory usage. Hibernation (suspend-to-disk) To begin with, let’s say that computers have changed a lot since swap was first used : • At first, swap was needed to extend real memory capacity. You would use swap so that the available memory would be the addition of the RAM space and the swap space. Nowadays, RAM are often big enough so that we could use the computer without any swap at all. Some programs really are memory-consuming : • Sometimes, something big (like OpenOffice, Neverwinter Nights or some video editor) make the entire system need extra memory. In these cases, swap will be used to make the system able to handle the extra load. Extra memory might come in handy : • Unforeseeable events, might and will happen (a program going crazy, some action needing much more space than you thought, or any other unbelievable combin
