this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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I use Arch btw


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this is right after closing qemu-kvm

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[–] RustyNova 36 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (20 children)

I keep hitting the cache on my 32gb laptop. So yeah, I'm using it.

But I made the dumb mistake of using a swap partition instead of a swap file

[–] 3rat 25 points 6 months ago (14 children)

What are the differences between swap a cache file? Why do you prefer the last one?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (6 children)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/swap#Swap_file

I call them swap files but either is correct.

A swap partition is a part of your storage disk that is formatted for swap use. It could also be it's own disk for high performance systems, but mostly for HPC.

A swap file is basically an empty disk image file that you mount as swap, the OS will use it just like a swap partition.

I prefer swap files because I find them easier to manage. I can easily delete, move, or enlarge the swap file whereas the partition will take a bit more work and is a bit riskier to change. Changing partition layouts can get very messy.

I always recommend a swap file be created when setting up a new Linux machine, even if you have loads of RAM. Some applications will use swap space to help performance, but I also like the fact that if I do something really dumb and fill up the root partition I can delete my swap file to free up space immediately, fix the full disk problem, and then recreate the swap file.

[–] 3rat 6 points 6 months ago

Thank you for your detailed explanation.

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