why ubuntu LTS installs all in a single partition?

[Colin Law]

On 4 August 2013 22:29, Christofer C. Bell <christofer.c.bell at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> If you have an 8GB machine and only use 2GB of RAM routinely, your use of
> the machine is very inefficient. :-)

Define "efficient use" in this context please.


>  That said, your swap *is* being used
> all the time for memory allocation calculations by the kernel.  The swap
> *itself* isn't visibly touched, but the presence of the virtual memory it
> provides is used every time the malloc() system call is made by a process.
>
> The goal in having 2GB of swap in the system is not to use it for actual
> swapping (a system that is swapping doesn't have enough physical RAM).   The
> 2GB of swap is so you can actually use all of your physical ram efficiently.
> I can understand this being unconvincing to you, it is difficult concept to
> grasp.  "How does having unused swap make the physical RAM I *do* have more
> efficient?"  But there it is.

I don't generally have great problems understanding difficult
concepts, thank you  (though I have to admit that I find the general
theory of relativity a bit tricky).  I fully comprehend your argument
that if one is operating close to limit of ones real RAM then swap may
be useful even if it is not actually used (though I am not qualified
to judge whether it is a /correct/ argument as is being discussed in
other posts here).  If one is nowhere near the limit however I do not
see that it is useful.

>
> Remember, the most efficiently used computer has 100% of the RAM consumed
> with no swapping and 100% of the processor used with nothing waiting on the
> run queue.  Running your system with 1/3 of the RAM used and pointing to
> that as the reason you don't need swap, well, that works, sure, but you've
> wasted money on the RAM.

I think that is an acceptance of the argument that one does not need
swap if one has plenty of headroom in real RAM.

Is it not true that if one has extra real RAM available then there is
more space for buffers and cache so that the machine will run faster?
If so then extra RAM improves the "efficiency" of my use of the
machine and I have not wasted money on RAM (in fact most desktops now
seem to come with more RAM that most users need anyway, so one does
not have much choice).  Also I certainly do not want my processor
running at close to 100% for any significant amount of time.  If it is
doing so then I am hanging about waiting for it.  I am more concerned
with using /my/ time efficiently then your concept of efficient use of
the machine.

Colin L