[ubuntu-uk] SwapBoost - A great idea or a terrible misgiving?

[Matt]

James Saveker wrote:
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> Whilst browsing the interweb today I came across this shell script
> called SwapBoost.
>
> http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/07/02/swapboost-v01alpha-early-testers-wanted/
>
> The gentleman who wrote it appears to believe it emulates Windows
> Vista's "ReadyBoost" technology.
>
> - From what I can tell ReadyBoost does an awful lot more than act as more
> page memory.. it uses the Windows SuperFetch technology to monitor your
> usage habits and load apps you are going to be using in to system memory
> prior to you launching them.  So it's kinda more like an intelligent cache.
>
> So I guess my question is do you think that even though this chap may be
> a little wrong in his approach the basic premise would benefit some
> Linux users on older systems lacking lot's of RAM?
>
> Just my $0.02....
>
> Jimbo.
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>   

I'm not sure that readyboost is very good, It seems like a bit of a 
bodge/another 'revolutionary' feature. Ram is very cheap, and even vista 
does not use more than can be cheaply bought.

Flash wear may be an issue, as I suspect it would be very write heavy. I 
use a SD card as swap in my eee to save excessive writes to the SSD in 
it, just as a precaution (I suspect that it would be fine without) I do 
have a USB flash drive is starting to fail, this was a very cheap one 
and has seen a lot of use, so I guess I can't be too grumpy.

Mj