Re: [PLUG] Upcoming December talk

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 12:52 PM, Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com> wrote:
> * virtual memory
>
>   What is it? How does it work? How much swap space do you need these
>   days? Do you need *any* swap space these days?

I'd be really interested in a good treatment of this one.  (In fact,
I'll probably start reading up on it now myself.)  While it might seem
like a simple topic, the fact that Mel Gorman managed to write 731
pages on the topic in 2007 betrays that there is quite a bit going on
in the kernel.

And that doesn't even get into how applications should be making use
of memory.  If I'm your web browser, how much memory should I use for
caching?  How do I know if my own cache works better than the kernel
disk cache does?  How should I trade off faster web browsing vs faster
everything else on the system?  And why is it that when you nice a
process it uses less CPU but doesn't use less RAM?  Why is it that I
have so little control over memory use short of editing source code?
Or do I?

Rich
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