On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 at 08:18, Giles Orr <giles...@gmail.com> wrote: > A few days after upgrading the last of my machines from Fedora 32 to > 33, I noticed my main machine has acquired a new disk: > > NAME SIZE FSTYPE LABEL MOUNTPOINT > zram0 4G [SWAP] > > I didn't set that up, and I don't think it was there on F32. So the > OS has, without asking, co-opted 1/4 of my 16G of RAM to use as swap > space. This system has an SSD, so when I initially set it up (Fedora > 27), I made a conscious decision to go without swap space. I rarely > push the limits of 16G. > > But now I'm in the situation that I have only 12G of RAM, so the > system will become memory-starved earlier ... and what will it do? It > will go to swap. Which is RAM anyway. How does this help? To me > this seems like adding complexity without adding utility. > > Can someone please explain A) if I'm correct about this behaviour in > the first place, and B) why it's useful? Thanks.
Hugh, this machine was an upgrade from Fedora 32. I guess the decision was made to go with the new default rather than ask questions during the upgrade. Thanks Hugh, Mauro, Dave for the info - and my apologies, I did zero research before turning to the list. Not my usual behaviour, I promise - I guess I was peeved because it was so unexpected. I assumed right out the gate that the statement "4G" meant it was using 4G of RAM. As has been pointed out, it's not allocated until it's used, and it's compressed - so even when full it'll usually only use 2G of RAM. After having read about it some, it sounds like it's mostly a win. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ giles...@gmail.com --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
