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[Tom <question79072@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #79072 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/79072

    Status: Open => Answered

Tom proposed the following answer:
Lol, 8Gb is huge!! Linux is unlikely to ever use all of it which gives
you a good safety-margin against slow-downs and crashes.  Not really an
issue for linux but good if you are going to run a Windows inside a
virtual machine also if you are going to run Windows on the other side
of a dual-boot, or both.

Yes, the swap will have either been created automatically or else the
installer might have decided not to bother with a swap given the huge
amount of ram.

However, suspend/sleep/hibernate copies the contents of ram into the
swap.  The swap space is on the hard-drive so it's information is
retained even when there's no power to the machine.  The ram gets
completely wiped by a power-down which is normally a good thing so that
it can start up all fresh and ready to start a new session.  With
sleep/hibernate/suspend the idea is to continue from where you left off.
Personally i avoid hibernate/suspend/sleep because it leaves the machine
much more vulnerable and it's only fair to let it get a good rest.  Some
environmentalists claim that using it saves power but from running a
machine on boat batteries i have found that just as much power is used
for the whole session either way.  I think they stop measuring before
the machine has stopped using mains power.

So the upshot of all that is that you do still need just over 8Gb,
8.5Gb(ish), of swap just in case you use hibernate.  However, it's a
good idea to put that 8Gb at the far end of a normal drive or just
anywhere you've got some space.

The rule of thumb "the more ram you have the quicker the machine" is
only really relevant for much lower ram size.  With 8Gb of ram the speed
factors will now be mostly determined by things like Cpu speed, amount
of L1 & L2 cache space on the Cpu (think of this as on-chip kinda ram),
hard-drive read/write speeds to the OS&progs, read/write speeds of the
ram chips perhaps even length & quality of cabling.  These are almost
entirely likely to be non-issues in your machine as it's likely that all
these are pretty good too.  The trick is in keeping the cpu temperature
low, and also keeping the mbord quite cool too.  Again i imagine that
this is good on your machine.

Ok, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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