Michael Honeyfield wrote:
Winston Graeme wrote:
One could do the same on Windows but it's less complicated & easier to use a swapfile I guess for end-user.
Um, Winston can you please explain to us in what exact why it's less complicated and easier to use a swapfile instead of a swap partition? What would ordinary end-users be doing playing around with the swap settings anyway? Only geeks need to do that. If you are an end-user who knows enough to play around with swap settings (which means you are a geek at least in that aspect) then what does it matter to you if it is on a file or a partition?
I fail to see the benifit in using a file (resulting in heavy disk fragmentation) over a swap partition.
This, and many other disadvantages, probably. I, a longtime Windows user, find Linux's usage of a separate swap partition a refreshing change. Now I don't have to worry about things like "Minimum swap size" "Maximum Swap Size", which partition on my HDD has how much space allocated to the swapfile, how that will affect fragmentation on my partitions etc. Now if an entire partition is given for swap, I simply stop worrying about such things.
The SUSE installer hides the "newbie" end user from the possible "confussion" of partioning.
I did my own partitioning, but Mike has a good point here.
So why would using a file be of any advantage? In actual fact, many windows sys admins try to put the windows swap file in its own partition or even on its own disk.
[raises hand] I'm not exactly a sys-admin. Just administer my own single non-LAN-ned PC. But I still have a separate 1 GiB partition for the swapfile, and NO swapfiles on my /windows/root and /windows/home partitions. (I refer of course to drive C with the Win XP installation and D with my user files.) -- Shriramana Sharma http://samvit.org