What you need to know about the Linux Swap Space

Whilst in Windows the Swap is a file, in Linux systems it is a partition and this partition is very important to the system when it needs more memory(RAM) than it is physically present. It is often said that 512MB of RAM in Linux is equivalent to 1024 RAM in Windows – this is also because of the big hand the Swap space gives to the memory. A complete guide on how to configure your Swap has been provided by Linux.com. The major advise they give is to make your Swap partition twice that of the physical memory – but not bigger than 2GB. So if you have 256MB of physical memory then get 512MB of Swap space.