So I've finally decided to setup a dual-boot for OpenSuse x64 and Windows 7 on my new notebook.  (I've been running OpenSuse in a VM just because I like that my new system can run multiple VMs simultaneously!)

I was wondering, what should the size of the swap partition be?  I used to make it double the amount of RAM, so when I had 512 MB I made it 1 gig.  But now I have 8 gigs of RAM, which would make the swap 16 gigs which seems too big.  I've never used a 64-bit version of linux before, so does anyone have any suggestions as to how big the swap should be with 8 gigs of RAM?  Also, my OpenSuse system will be on an SSD drive if that matters.

I did a Google search on this first and (surprisingly) didn't really come up with any useful tips.

@Seen,

In old days, when memory cost was sky high, we used to have double-the-ram size swap partitions. Now as they are cheaper, swap size is not of concern. I had seen server with 64GB Ram running Unix flavors with very small swap partition. However, it entirely depends on what you are going to do with system. If it is a dbserver or something heavy, then we need to consider swap size.

My laptop was setup with Linux, plenty of hard drive space, 6 GB of RAM, and no swap partition. I was getting ready for a presentation on WEP cracking last month. I had no problem until I started collecting IV packets. I would only get to about 3,000 or so before the laptop would just crash.

It took me a while to figure out the problem, but all I did was use GParted on a LiveCD to shrink my Linux partition and add a 2 GB swap partition. No more problem.

Glad I could help. I believe that if you have a swap partition, any distro will utilize it (unless you use some bootup option like noswap on Knoppix). Not sure if this will work if you put the swap partition in LVM.