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

[starshipeleven]

I'm wondering if now swapfiles can handle hybernation too. I thought only swap partitions could handle that.

[darkbasic]

Meanwhile, on btrfs...

[bug77]

what's so bad about swap partition apart from just being old? swapfiles are still going to use storage space

They were meant to optimize access back when the HDD was the new kid on the block. These days it doesn't hurt, but its fixed size can be hindrance in rare occasions.
Personally, I don't remember when was the last time I defined a swap partitions, but it was certainly more than 3 years ago.

[cjcox]

I wonder what happens if you place the swapfile in a tmpfs partition

You make me laugh.

[LinAGKar]

What if you want hibernation?

[jpp650]

Fantastic idiotic movement from Ubuntu. If for whatever reason I need to page-out because of memory shortage, now I know that it will crawl even more if I use Ubuntu, thanks to having to cross the filesystem layer to reach the storage. They should call the distribution Microsoft-Linux and recommend it only to desktops.

[migizi]

I don't see the real benefit to this. Having worked in IT for a long time, those swap files always caused problems. Especially with removable media. Windows loved to put swap files on external hard drives, then you can unmount it properly. If you just say F-it and pull it out you cause a bunch of problems. I also don't see how that is going to play out well in mirrored raid. You're basically writing your swap data twice now instead of just having it sit on a non mirrored partition.

[pal666]

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

linux supported this before release of nt 4.0. it is not used by default because it is slower and makes no sense
there is exactly one usecase for swap files: when you already have system and discovered that you need more swap and can't make space available as partition

[Serafean]

Fantastic idiotic movement from Ubuntu. If for whatever reason I need to page-out because of memory shortage, now I know that it will crawl even more if I use Ubuntu, thanks to having to cross the filesystem layer to reach the storage. They should call the distribution Microsoft-Linux and recommend it only to desktops.

Even though you read my mind for arguments, I don't have time for benchmarks do you? Does anyone?
Although the more I think about it, this might be a good move for SSD lifespan...

Meanwhile, on btrfs...

LOL

[pal666]

I've been running without a swap partition for years, basically after I got 8GB RAM a few machines ago - I'm now running on 32GB

swap is cheaper and will increase your cache capacity