[TriLUG] SWAP and SSD vs HDD

[Roger]

Linux does a great job of memory management. I seem to recall 8 GB of ram so, except in the case of very heavy usage, swap it's used very little. Monitor it and look at swap usage. The only time I saw maxing out ram and swap usage was with Windows as a guest in a Vbox VM because I pushed the limits on a laptop with 2 GB ram. When I closed Windows, swap usage dropped to near zero and ram usage dropped back to "normal." Even with multiple memory intensive tasks running, little swap usage, e.g., firefox + thunderbird + open office + GIMP.

Given you'll likely see minimal swapping, "wear" of the SSD should not be an issue. Only good reason to put it there may be faster resumes from suspend.
-- Roger Broseus
    www.bronord.com