Creating a swap file

Using old hardware, having swap space in addition to RAM can make your computer operate more smoothly.

From a fresh 'buntu Install

After a fresh Lubuntu on an old machine (with only 2 GB of RAM), I followed the directions on "Create a Linux swap file" (Rackspace 2018) to create a swap file 1.

You can use the htop command to see a summary of the processes running on your computer in addition to CPU and memory usage.

On Arch Linux

Just check the Arch Wiki for the latest instrtuctions. I blindly followed the directions above for Ubuntu and it didn't quite work.

  1. Remember that Linux distributions are for the most part just bundled software and default configurations. Choosing Ubuntu (or some 'buntu "flavor") is an easy way to get a widely documented default setup going. ↩

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