In defence of swap: common misconceptions
Very few people on this thread read and understood the article. The point isn&#x27;t working with data sets larger than RAM. The point is making better use of the RAM you do have by taking pages you&#x27;ll almost never touch and spilling them to disk so that there&#x27;s more room in RAM for pages you <i>will</i> touch.<p>Banning swap is like making self-storage companies illegal and forcing everyone to hold all possessions in their homes. Sure, you&#x27;d be able to get to grandma&#x27;s half broken kitschy dog coaster that you can&#x27;t bring yourself to throw away, but you&#x27;d also be harder to harder to fit and find your own stuff, the stuff you need all the time.<p>If you find yourself driving to and from the self storage place every day, you probably need a bigger home. But self storage is plenty useful even if you almost never visit it.