Swap
Lazyweb, oh lazyweb...
I still don't really understand how Linux handles swap space. One thing in particular irritates the hell out of me. I have 1.5GB of RAM, but I still occasionally manage to wind up using it all, just for a brief time while I'm running a lot of stuff, and then things start to swap.
This is fine.
What I DON'T understand is why, when I quit a bunch of apps and bring conventional RAM usage down to comfortably below maximum, this swap space is STILL used. And I still hear the telltale hard drive clicking which tells me stuff is still swapping.
I mean, look at my htop right now:
Mem[|||||||||||||||||||1044/1510MB] Swp[|||||||||||| 435/1153MB]
There's 450MB of system RAM sitting there doing nothing. Why is there still 435MB of swap space being used?
I just don't get this. Can someone smart please explain it to me? :)
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