RAM space vs swap space

[arson smith]

The way I understand it Linux likes to fill up all the ram
it can and then use unneeded stuff as free ram and swaps it
out right away.  I run on 128 megs of ram with a win98 vm
set with 64 megs and almost never hit swap.   I don't do much
graphics work but most of the high end graphics work I have
seen have had a minimum of 256 megs ram.  It seems like a lot
to me but I guess when images are 10-30 megs compressed they
really take up a lot of ram when being worked on.

Bill W

ps I really have no idea what I am talking about so please
correct me if I am wrong,  this is just the way I understand
it.


>From: Rick Rosinski <rick@rickrosinski.com>
>Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
>To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
>Subject: Re: RAM space vs swap space
>Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:19:21 -0700
>
> > Look at how much of your swap is being used.  Swap is used as a last 
>resort
> > under linux.  It moves things that aren't being accessed anymore from 
>RAM to
> > swap.  Your system is using only 2MB of swap.  Is this with things like 
>GIMP
> > running?
>
>No.  This was with minimal apps open.  No gimp running.  When I load Gimp 
>and
>work with images, lots of disk activity is happening, and free swap space
>becomes low.  I just wanted to demonstrate how much memory is occupied by 
>cache
>and shared memory.
>
>I was informed that shared memory is for shared libraries, and having them
>loaded into helps speed things up and so that apps using shared libraries
>actually occupy less memory.
>
>I would like to sacrifice the cache memory though, even though it is 
>supposed
>to shrink as apps need more ram.  I want as much ram free from cache and 
>things
>like that so that I can modify images in Gimp without waiting for the swap
>memory to catch up with me (I don't like waiting, that is why I got more 
>ram in
>the first place).
>
>Rick Rosinski
>http://www.rickrosinski.com
>rick@rickrosinski.com
>
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