Q: Should I have swap?

[Jack Wasey]

> Before saying "everybody needs swap!" hear me out :)
Heard you out. You will still benefit from swap. It will improve the performance 
even when RAM is not maxed out, and as the other posted pointed out, you won't 
hit a brick wall if it is. You can tune /proc/sys/vm/swappiness to reduce the 
tendency to use swap for backgrounding applications, but you're undermining a 
lot of careful work, research and benchmarking. It's like putting a big spoiler 
on your car, ruining the millions of pounds of aerodynamics research (and your 
street cred).