what is the difference between swap partition and swap

[Steven Vollom]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Jonas Norlander wrote:
>
>   
>> 2009/3/12 Derek Broughton <derek at pointerstop.ca>:
>>     
>>> Brian Norman Wootton wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> There used to be a maximum partition size for swap of 2 GB, I don't know
>>>> if this still applies.
>>>>         
>>> Never in my memory (I started using at least 3GB when I bought my Dell
>>> laptop at least 5 years ago, because I was using swap for tmpfs).
>>>       
>> Well there are a limit of 4 Gb (if you use 32 bit architectures) for
>> your virtual memory and that includes RAM, Swap, Graphics memory and
>> other devices. 
>>     
>
> Surely that's not right.  People are using 4GB _real_ memory (using PAE
> kernels) - do they not get any swap at all?  I really am going to have to
> finish the installation on this machine...
>   
I don't know if you want to hear this, but I just built my new computer 
a 64bit machine.  I have a fairly large HDD and Lots of memory Plus a 
quad-core now.  When I set up my new system, I installed Intrepie 64bit 
with KDE 4.2.  Not knowing it wasn't possible, I made a 50gb boot 
partition and a 20gb swap partition and so far it is working pretty 
good.  So if you have a newer OS, you may be able to have more swap.  I 
didn't know there were limitations when I did it.  I have 8gb memory 
installed.

Steven