You don't have to use a swap *partition*. You can use a swap *file*. 
Just dd some space from /dev/zero to a file like /swapfile and then use 
mkswap on the file.  Then you can activate it with the "swapon" command.


Kenny McHenry wrote:
> From what I have heard swap space isn't necessary like you were 
> saying. In netbooks they aren't using swap space, because it reduces 
> the strain put on the solid state harddrives that have a finite number 
> of read/writes before they go bad. I'd say that as long as you have 
> enough memory in your computer you would be perfectly fine with 
> running without swap.
>
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:45 PM, Stephen <cryptworks@gmail.com 
> <mailto:cryptworks@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I understand that swap is not as critical anymore with machines now
>     having 2, 4, and even larger amounts of Ram available. but aside from
>     being able to allow a more graceful recovery of a runaway process. how
>     needed is swap in a desktop machine?
>
>     reason i ask is I'm getting ready to try and cram a 3rd partition on a
>     macbook pro and the EFI boot schema it has can only deal with 4
>     partitions, but mac OSX has 2 of those and i have XP Pro in there as
>     well. and if i include swap space i will be at 5 not the limit of 4.
>
>     --
>     A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
>     rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>
>     Stephen
>