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From:   Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Date:   Thu, 4 Mar 2021 19:58:11 +0100
Message-ID: <CAMuHMdXv8P-wiNVRv6VLX2OFuy5AxgP3Gk49eLFBGGaQLf46bg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: A note on the 5.12-rc1 tag
To:     David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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Hi David,

On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 5:56 PM David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 1:59 PM Linus Torvalds
> > <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > > And, as far as I know, all the normal distributions set things up with
> > > swap partitions, not files, because honestly, swapfiles tend to be
> > > slower and have various other complexity issues.
> >
> > Looks like this has changed in at least Ubuntu: my desktop machine,
> > which got Ubuntu 18.04LTS during initial installation, is using a (small)
> > swapfile instead of a swap partition.
>
> My older ubuntu (13.04) didn't have swap at all.

IIRC, the small swapfile was the default suggestion. I don't really
need swap (yummy, 53 GiB in buff/cache ;-)

> I had to add some when running multiple copies of the Altera
> fpga software started causing grief.
> That will be a file.

Or switch FPGA, and use yosys ;-)

> After all once you start swapping it is all horrid and slow.
> Swap to file may be slower, but apart from dumping out inactive
> pages you really don't want to be doing it - so it doesn't matter.
>
> Historically swap was a partition and larger than physical memory.
> This allows simple 'dump to swap' on panic (for many disk types).
> But I've not seen that support in linux.

I know.  We started with lots of small partitions, but nowadays the
distros wan't to install everything in a single[*] partition, even swap.

[*] Ignoring /boot/efi, which didn't exist in the good ol' days.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds