Re: Question regarding swap partition when installing Linux Mint Debian.

[Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net>]

On 02/01/2014 03:42 PM, Lauge Andersen wrote:

Hi.

I intend to install Linux Mint Debian and give up on the Ubuntu based distros. However when I go through the installer, I get to the point where I'm supposed to choose the size of the different partitions, but can anyone tell me how big should the swap partition be?

I've read online that the size of the swap partition should be determined by the memory.

I've therefore copypasted from my terminal below:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7871       1546       6325          0         38        491
-/+ buffers/cache:       1015       6855
Swap:        12011          0      12011

I'm currently using Lubuntu, it got an applicantion in the menu called "discs" and it shows that I currently got a swap partition on 8,5 GB. Will it therefore be correct just to choose to make the swap partition in Linux Mint Debian 8,5 GB as well?

Can I assume that the swap partition size the installer of an Ubuntu based distro automatically chose is the best size for a partition for Debian based distro as well? (I just chose the default installation when installing Lubuntu as well as other Ubuntu based distros, and therefore didn't have to chose the size of the partition manually)

I guess this probably is a really stupid question, but since I'm fairly new to Linux, and some of the info I found online regarding this question was fairly confusing, I hope you can bear with me. And in case you notice quite some misspellings, I might as well add that English is not my native tongue :)

Any way thanks a lot for the help in advance,

Cheers.

If you already have that swap partition, just leave it there and your new distro will use it. You can have one swap for as many distros as you have on the machine!
(Since you only use it with one distro at a time, you don't need more than one.) 
However, there seems to be some discrepancy in the measurements, unless you already have 2 swap partitions. Free says 12 GB, discs (with which I'm not familiar)
says 8.5 GB.  If you have two swap partitions, you can delete one and make it part of your usable disk space. I think you could safely delete the larger one.

Parenthetically, I sort of liked Mint, but I thought it was somewhat limited. You might try Korora.  But that's up to you, of course.

--doug