what is the difference between swap partition and swap

[Ignazio Palmisano]

Steven Vollom wrote:
> 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.


50 gigs of boot partition or of root partition? If it's just for the 
boot (I believe there are only the kernel images + some grub stuff & 
similar), I believe 1 gig is more than enough for the foreseeable future :)

I.