Q: Should I have swap?

[Jack Wasey]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I'd really love to setup RAM quotas or something. It must be possible 
> (e.g. each client could get a Linux virtual machine) but it may be too 
> much work or it may do more harm than good (e.g. giving each user a LVM 
> would mean duplicating Gnome+applications for every user).

I don't know about LTSP RAM quotas, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible 
in some form. Depending on the number of users, perhaps some kind of 
virtualisation solution could work. Xen would have fixed RAM quotas per VM. 
Higher-level solutions can allocate RAM at a higher level, like Solaris's 
effort. Don't know about VMWare.

The following link is the definitive discussion on swap:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3202

It makes me think of the idea of 'ideal' memory, i.e. large and persistent but 
at volatile RAM speeds. How would this change computing? The swap debate would 
certainly be out of the window...