Does it actually work?

Posted Apr 11, 2025 11:48 UTC (Fri) by daroc (editor, #160859)
In reply to: Does it actually work? by Wol
Parent article: Three ways to rework the swap subsystem

I'm not intimately familiar with Linux's swap system, but I think the distinction you're making is not one the swap system makes. On my laptop right now I have ~500MB in swap, which appears to be small sections of memory from a variety of different processes.

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Does it actually work?

Posted Apr 11, 2025 12:51 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

If I remember correctly μClinux can use “a swapping system” (just like ancient Unix versions like Xenix 8086 had to do because they worked on a system without any MMU, even strange and primitive ones, like 80286).

Mainstream Linux never had support for “a swapping system”, because it was never supported any hardware where that even makes any sense.

MacOS (Classic) and Windows developed very elaborate and clever system with handles and movable pages and also never did that.

That's why that distinction that Wol talks about is more-or-less forgotten in a world of modern software.