> And, as far as I know, all the normal distributions set things up with
swap partitions, not files
I guess Ubuntu is not a "normal" distribution then? Because it uses a swap file by default.
I guess Ubuntu is not a "normal" distribution then? Because it uses a swap file by default.
It's just that it's much easier for anyone who just gets started with Linux to have a swap file.
For example for hibernation you swap partition needs to have the right size. But people do upgrade their desktop RAM and as such would need to resize the partition, which isn't easy (because likely it means shrinking another partition)...
So for a distribution like ubuntu the "non-normal" case became the default.
Still this mail was targeting people which install pre-release versions of Linux kernerls which is a group of people relatively unlikely to use a swap file.
At one point in the past I used the default (or recommended) /boot size and got stuck a couple of years later juggling at updates to fit the boot files into the partition. I just use a monolithic partition per OS per disk now and swap files within that. Is that not good practice (for home systems)?
Edit: A swap file has a little bit of overhead because of the underlying file system. But at the point you notice this, your system is pretty much frozen anyways.