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A few months ago, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 alongside with Windows 7 on my Asus EEE-PC 1015bx. It has a tendency of freezing and when trying to investigate I found that a swap partition of only 256 MB had been created. The Asus EEE-PC 1015bx is born with 1 GByte RAM only and it is not possible to add further or exchange the existing 1 GByte with a larger card. When looking at the system monitor, it looks like all swap is being utilized along with 70-75% of the RAM, even with very few applications running.

Can the lack of much swap space be the reason for my computer running slowly and at times freezing?

How can I add a swap partition? Or should I add a swap file instead?

At the moment, I see two partitions when viewing the system monitor: one 28.6 GByte ext4 partition which must be the one containing Ubuntu and one 100 GByte fuseblk partition which I assume is the one holding Windows. It shows that I have 18.6 GByte free space on the ext4 partition. Can I "take a bite" from the ext4 partition and convert this into a swap partition? I was thinking something like 3 GBytes for swap considering my limited RAM.

I hope that someone can guide me through.

Thank you.

20th Oct 2012 - Further details

Thank you for below answer which I find very useful. I am certainly considering switching to one of your suggested shells as I can see from the Internet that many have posted that these require much fewer resources than ubuntu. It seems to me that lubuntu is the perfect match for my very limited computer. I will have to wait a few days, though, as I am presently limited by a very slow and restricted Internet connection via satellite. But will lubuntu install as simply another shell replacing unity or will it replace ubuntu all together? Will the software that I have installed under ubuntu still be accessible in lubuntu? And can I return to ubuntu if required?

Regarding the actual question of swap: When I run gparted, it shows me that there is one ntfs partition of 100 GBytes from where it boots and the before mentioned ext4 partition of 28.6 GBytes is not mentioned. Could it be that my ubuntu installation resides inside this 100 GBytes ntfs partiotion? And if so, can I take a bite of this for my swap partition?

enter image description here

Realising that gparted is shown in Danish, I hope that you can make out what I mean.

System monitoring shows below details: enter image description here

Once again I sincerely hope that you can help.

Thank you.

Kristian Jensen
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  • To add more swap see http://askubuntu.com/questions/126018/adding-a-new-swap-file-how-to-edit-fstab-to-enable-swap-after-reboot and http://askubuntu.com/questions/33697/adding-swap-partition-after-system-installation – Takkat Oct 19 '12 at 08:00

1 Answers1

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Before I answer your question, a word of advice: consider changing the default Ubuntu desktop (which is quite resource heavy) to something more lightweight. Lubuntu or Xubuntu both seem to be good alternatives. You can install them with

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

and 

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

respectively.

Yes, you can change the size of your partition and create a new one using a program called gparted.

However, you should boot the computer from the LiveCD or USB installation (with the "try Ubuntu" option), because you cannot modify partitions which are in use.

After you have used gparted (which is pretty intuitive, but google if you have any problems) and your swap has been successfully created (remember to tell gparted to format the partition as Linux swap!), you will have to boot modify the /etc/fstab file to tell it to use the new swap partition.

You can do it either from the LiveCD, or from the running system. The second one, in its least efficient, but simplest form is this: boot into your system, open the /etc/fstab file:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Put a comment char (#) in front of the line (if there is one) which refers to swap. Add another line like that:

UUID=2xx52d6-12b6-4457-bc4e-24ac7fe64176 none             swap    sw              0       0

Where to get this UUID thing? Type the following command

sudo blkid

It will list all partitions and their respective UUID's. The one which is swap will have TYPE="swap".

Ask if you have any further questions.

January
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  • Thank you very much for this comprehensive reply. Have looked at lubuntu and xubuntu and this definitely seems like option worth trying. Will this simply replace the shell or are these othere distributions that will replace ubuntu? What about the already installed software? Will this stay installed when switching to lubuntu? – Kristian Jensen Oct 20 '12 at 04:41
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    They will add a session to the login manager, they will not replace Unity nor any programs installed. – Uri Herrera Oct 20 '12 at 05:25
  • Exactly. They will not uninstall anything, just install a few alternatives that might be less intensive on memory / cpu when run. Also, you will be able to go back to the standard system if you find that this is nothing for you. – January Oct 20 '12 at 07:07
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    Once again thank you for the replies and comments. I have now created a larger swap file instead, as the system already had the maximum 4 primary partitions and therefore would not let me create further. So my system is now stable but a bit slow... Next step will be to install lubuntu once I get to an Internet connection that will allow this. I then think that I have matured enough to remove windows all together so, sometime in near future, my plan is to start over and install lubuntu on a clean hard disk with the proper partitions. – Kristian Jensen Oct 23 '12 at 05:14