How Big Should My Swap Partition Be?

For the last 10 years, I have been asking people more knowledgeable than I, "How big should my swap be?" and the answer has always been "Just set it to twice your RAM and forget about it." In the old days, it wasn't much to think about — 128 megs of RAM means 256 megs of swap. Now that I have 4 gigs of RAM in my laptop, I find myself wondering, "Is 8 gigs of swap really necessary?" How much swap does the average desktop user really need? Does the whole "twice your RAM" rule still apply? If so, for how much longer will it likely apply? Or will it always apply? Or have I been consistently misinformed over the last 10 years?

Comments

Re:What Has Changed?

[trisweb]

Perhaps you'd like to tell us whether a GB is base 2 or base 10 then.

It's a disambiguation, and no programmer/engineer/nerd worth their salt argues for less specific information for the sole reason of being socially favorable.

Re:What Has Changed?

[Isauq]

I, too, fail to see how GGP is flamebait: In truth, I'd say it's a fair approximation of the interaction between two incredibly and inexplicably memory-hungry applications.

I would also like to mention the AC that is my GP is not somehow "insightful" for being a bog-standard troll calling someone names on the internet.