Whenever I install Ubuntu on my system, I get one message that you havent specified any swap space, press Yes to go back to the partition table otherwise you will get system speed lag somthing..........
Where to begin? In Windows, the OS takes a big chunk of your HDD and uses it for a VM pagetable, or
swap file. This, in theory anyway, is supposed to be that when Windows runs out of memory to use, it falls back on the swap file to use the HDD like fake RAM, moving the less-commonly called stuff from RAM to the HDD in order to make more room. Unfortunately, Windows memory management is horrible (sorry Windows fans, it is), and it doesn't actually work out that way. In fact Windows uses the swapfile almost constantly, no matter how much RAM is free. Listen to a redbook audio CD in your Windows PC sometime and watch the HDD activity LED on your chasis go completely nuts.
In contrast, Linux, BSD and other unices only use the swap file when it's absolutely necessary to do so. So with a machine that has a lot of RAM, your system will almost never swap. Also unlike Windows, Linux uses a swap partition rather than just swapping to radom parts of the HDD. This is for both security and data integrity. It's a good idea to have at least a small one, even if you never use it. In a system with >=512mb of RAM, 128-256mb swap partition is plenty. On systems with less than 512, or if you routinely work with
huge files on your system, you may want a larger swap. Again, you'll probably almost never use it, so anything over 256 is usually a waste.
Hope this answers your question... :P
