Ubuntu To Begin Making Use Of Swapfiles In Place Of SWAP Partitions

[Shimon]

Silly crap, considering they should already have a working ZRAM setup with a higher priority. Once enabled you should never require old-school swapping.

[Inopia]

Silly crap, considering they should already have a working ZRAM setup with a higher priority. Once enabled you should never require old-school swapping.

It's ridiculous that they still have not enabled zram by default. At least all you need to do is install zram-config and you get good defaults.

[Megaf]

After 20 years, catching up to NT 4.0. Better late than never.

Linux and UNIX systemm had that already for a very long time too, but it was and still is optional, one of the ways of doing that on Debian for example is using swap space.

# apt show swapspace
Package: swapspace
Version: 1.10-4
Installed-Size: 143 kB
Maintainer: Eugene V. Lyubimkin <[email protected]>
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7-1), lsb-base (>= 3.2-14)
Conflicts: swapd
Homepage: http://pqxx.org/development/swapspace
Tag: hardware::storage, implemented-in::c, interface::daemon, role::program,
 scope::utility, use::organizing
Section: admin
Priority: extra
Download-Size: 29.5 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
Description: dynamic swap space manager
 Small, stable system add-on that continuously and automatically adapts
 available virtual memory space to your actual memory needs.  Claims disk space
 for use as swap space when needed; frees it up for use by the filesystem when
 not needed.

[pal666]

Actually there is no performance benefit to swap partitions vs swap files.

you wanted to say there is no big benefit. it has to keep map of blocks

[darkbasic]

change swap partition to ext2 an make file on it

You clearly didn't understand what's the problem with hybernation and encryption: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...wap_encryption
Using the builtin resume hook (which uses swap files) is much easier than having to bother with custom hooks.
Btrfs is annoying in such regard.

[Space Heater]

It's ridiculous that they still have not enabled zram by default. At least all you need to do is install zram-config and you get good defaults.

Wouldn't it be better to use zswap along with a swap partition (or file) by default? This would mean existing swap devices are used efficiently while also compressing contents in memory, whereas with zswap you are creating a separate swap device in main memory. I don't think using zram removes the need for a swap device for all combinations of workloads and systems either, so they cannot start removing swap creation from the default installation (which is what I'd hazard a large chunk of users go with).

[ldo17]

... windows has other ways to mount drives too (i.e. Windows can also mount drives to folders like Linux). https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../cc938934.aspx

In theory, yes. But in practice, Windows mount points don’t work very well.

• They are specific to NTFS. Compare Linux, where they are implemented at the VFS layer, so they are filesystem-independent.
• They can cause software incompatibilities. E.g. an application installer checks for space on the C: drive, and will fail if there isn’t enough there, even though it is actually going into a mount point underneath.

Thus, they are not often used, and very few Windows users actually know about them.

[torsionbar28]

After 20 years, catching up to NT 4.0. Better late than never.

How do you figure? Sounds like you lack a basic understanding of how swap works. A swap partition will always perform better than a swap file. After all, writing to a partition bypasses the entire VFS layer. Linux was ahead of NT 4.0 in the 1990's in this regard, since feeble old NT never was capable of utilizing a swap partition.

All of this is a moot point nowadays, given how cheap RAM is, plus the emergence of SSD's. If your machine is doing any considerable amount of swapping in 2016, you incorrectly spec'd the hardware for your workload, so the answer is to add more RAM.

Ubuntu's decision is purely for convenience and config simplification, since the performance hit of a swap file is negligible nowadays.

[starshipeleven]

In theory, yes. But in practice, Windows mount points don’t work very well.

• They are specific to NTFS. Compare Linux, where they are implemented at the VFS layer, so they are filesystem-independent.
• They can cause software incompatibilities. E.g. an application installer checks for space on the C: drive, and will fail if there isn’t enough there, even though it is actually going into a mount point underneath.

Thus, they are not often used, and very few Windows users actually know about them.

Well, we were talking of businness usage.
Mounting folders around works fine for businness, and the points you raise are kinda irrelevant there.

[ldo17]

Thus, they are not often used, and very few Windows users actually know about them.

Well, we were talking of businness usage.

My remark applies to all users, “businness” or not.