>>> # Firstly, the notion of "swap" is antiquated and has no purpose in an OS on
>>> # the verge of the 21st century.
>>> # 
>>> # The correct way to do this, IMHO, is to use unallocated filesystem space
>>> # as swap space.
>> 
>> This seems so obvious to me; what am I missing?

> Err.. WHY do you want to do this? :) As you say, disks are quite large these
> days.  I have no problem in creating a 1 GB swap partition which means I
> will never run out of swap.

It comes from a deep-seated belief: never impose limitations when none are
needed.

Sure, I could allocate 1 GB of swap on my 22 GB disk, but what if I wanted
to do a molecular model that needed 11 GB?  Well, I'd be SOL.

I don't understand why everybody seems to want to hardwire constants into
the filesystems when a more flexible approach doesn't need to do that.


> On the other hand, if my system was using the
>"free disk space" for swap instead of a fixed partition, I would run out
>of swap all the time when my disks become full. ;-)

This can be easily handled by quotas or other policy decisions.


Gentlemen, we simply -must- break out of this 20th-century unix box we've
been living in and re-evaluate how to make our beloved OS the winner in 
the 21st century!

-Mike