The pro-swap stance has never made sense to me because it feels like a logical loop.
There’s a common rule of thumb that says you should have swap space equal to some multiple of your RAM.
For instance, if I have 8 GB of RAM, people recommend adding 8 GB of swap. But since I like having plenty of memory, I install 16 GB of RAM instead—and yet, people still tell me to use swap. Why? At that point, I already have the same total memory as those with 8 GB of RAM and 8 GB of swap combined.
Then, if I upgrade to 24 GB of RAM, the advice doesn’t change—they still insist on enabling swap. I could install an absurd amount of RAM, and people would still tell me to set up swap space.
It seems that for some, using swap has become dogma. I just don’t see the reasoning. Memory is limited either way; whether it’s RAM or RAM + swap, the total available space is what really matters. So why insist on swap for its own sake?
There’s a common rule of thumb that says you should have swap space equal to some multiple of your RAM.
For instance, if I have 8 GB of RAM, people recommend adding 8 GB of swap. But since I like having plenty of memory, I install 16 GB of RAM instead—and yet, people still tell me to use swap. Why? At that point, I already have the same total memory as those with 8 GB of RAM and 8 GB of swap combined.
Then, if I upgrade to 24 GB of RAM, the advice doesn’t change—they still insist on enabling swap. I could install an absurd amount of RAM, and people would still tell me to set up swap space.
It seems that for some, using swap has become dogma. I just don’t see the reasoning. Memory is limited either way; whether it’s RAM or RAM + swap, the total available space is what really matters. So why insist on swap for its own sake?