why ubuntu LTS installs all in a single partition?

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4 August 2013 17:33, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> In my experience, provided the machine has enough RAM, the most common
>> case where swap starts being used is when a process runs out of
>> control and starts consuming more and more memory.  Then swapping
>> starts and the result is that the whole machine effectively grinds to
>> a halt thrashing the disc until eventually it runs out of swap also.
>> All that the swap space does is make the machine effectively unusable
>> for the period until it runs out of swap.  It would often be better
>> for it just to fail immediately it runs out of real RAM.
>
> This. Very strongly agreed.

Disagree, at least for my use.  I am doing research that involves
creation of files whose size I do no know in advance.  Yesterday, I
had one that was 1.8TB in size, fortunately it had a 2TB drive to
itself.  It was part of a longer process which I stopped and will
re-design.  Similar things happen in memory.  Since I make a lot of
these programs, even if I tried to install fail-safes, I could not
guarantee they were working until they were tested.  Thus, I use the
options to do partitioning.

I find it useful for the machine to thrash during a period when I can
kill the process.  If I wait for the kernel to do it, there's no
telling which process will be the victim.

So, as usual, it depends on what you're doing with your machine.

On the other hand, I strongly agree that the defaults should be a
single partition.  That's going to work for almost everyone, even if
it's not best for me.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman

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