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I have an ACER Inspire 5720 laptop PC (32bits) and will install Ubuntu14.04 LTS on it.

The hard drive has a 160 GB capacity with 2 GB Ram memory. I should like to know how much space I have to reserve for swap and system to keep my PC quick and with enough memory to install a lot of programs.

Takkat
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Marnix Claeys Huvaere
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  • Recommended and default /swap size is twice the RAM (assuming you have 2 GB then it would be 4 GB). I'd just let the installer take care of it (see answer to this question). For a manual partitioning (recommended for advanced users) see: http://askubuntu.com/questions/343268/how-to-use-manual-partitioning-during-installation. – Takkat Feb 18 '15 at 08:54
  • Usually people recommend a swap size of about 1-2x the RAM size. But depending on what you are going to do, also less or more might be appropriate. – Byte Commander Feb 18 '15 at 13:28

2 Answers2

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0 bytes is the perfect swap size - that is do not create a swap partition and do not bother with swap at all. If you ever find this is indeed a problem (I never have), then create a swap file - with a swap file it is easy to experiment with the right size (half of your RAM size to start with and then up to 2 times that).

ppp
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  • Thank you very much. Can you tell me if the first option, installing Ubuntu (automatic install without any changes) should be the best way, or do they make automaticly a swap? – Marnix Claeys Huvaere Feb 18 '15 at 19:30
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It depends on your use case.

  1. If you're a very light user that only ever had one tab open in FireFox (forget about chromium) only uses two applications at a time (like Firefox and Thunderbirdand that doesn't need hibernation: No swap necessary.

  2. medium user: With only 2GB of RAM, I would put in a 4GB swap so you can have multiple tabs open (and individual tabs will be swapped out) and 3-6 applications open. You will also be able to use hibernation.

  3. Heavy user: buy more RAM! ;-)

Some free tips:

I wouldn't install Ubuntu, but Xubuntu. Read here for more details.

I would take system back-ups into account. (as you will be re-installing, just go for User type 4)

Community
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Fabby
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