I have installed 15 times and recompiled about 10 times now, and have made some discoveries about swap space. The documentation that says that Linux doesn't handle large partitions well is correct. Large means bigger than 128 BTW. Here's what I have Dual PIII 600, 256 MB 133MHz SDRAM, 2x 15GB ATA66 Hard Drives, A Voodoo 3 3500 AGP 16MB video card, an STB Velocity 128 8MB video card, a soundblaster live, a 72x Kenwood CD-ROM, and 4x4x4 CDRW. The first time I installed Linux I gave it 512MB swap. It was horrible even after a recompile. The second time I gave it 256MB swap, and it didn get much better. The third time, I knew a little about Linux and had read the documentation and found that it shouldn't have more than 128 so that what I gave it. I also watched the perf meter very closely! In those 4 weeks, the computer only used the swap twice, and both times it still had about 100MB of physical RAM left. Also note that I compile software, I recompiled my kernel, played several 3D games(inclding QuakeII and III), during the whole time, my computer is running as the name and proxy server on my home lan. So I got to thinking, isn't swap space really there to make up for the physical RAM that you don't have? This last time I installed, I didn't give Linux any swap space, and it runs better now than I've ever seen it. I also run Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 without any virtua memory, and their performance has had a substantial gain lately. Just a little advice from experience, and take it with a grain of salt. I wouldn't drop the swap completely, unless you have 256MB or better.
