[LUAU] Running a standard distro without swap space

[Brian Chee]

Actually I have a question...why would you want to run a machine without
swap? There are good reasons if you're running an embedded linux machine,
but for normal machines I've seen folks setup unix boxes that boot from the
network but ONLY do swap to the local hard disk. Those old xterms did this
alot just so that you don't swap over the network.

A good example of a linux machine that didn't use swap were those old N!C
(New Internet Computers) that Larry Ellison of Oracle pushed for a while.
These ran from the internal cdrom and had no swap...while a good concept,
they were pigs...very slow and they were cheap only for a very short amount
of time. Once you tossed in a small laptop drive for swap, boy did they run
great...but once you did that you lost the cost advantage.

The only embedded machines I've seen nowdays that regularlly don't run any
swap at all, are those tiny little CPM or DOS machines. Since those don't
even have virtual memory, swap isn't necessary. But on a
multithreaded/multiuser machine swap just makes sense.

Anyway, forgive me if I missed the point...but at the super low cost of
drives nowdays, even a tiny drive for swap makes sense.

/brian chee

University of Hawaii ICS Dept
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