Strange RAM and swap size

[theArianit]

Checking the system monitor, it says that my machine has 16.7GB RAM and 17.2GB swap! My machine has actually 16GB RAM.

Why is that so and how can I fix it to show the right numbers?

when I run free -m I get this resul: total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 15888 2172 11421 586 2294 12848 Swap: 16400 0 16400

and swapon -s: Filename Type Size Used Priority /swap/swapfile file 524284 0 -2 /dev/zram0 partition 4067412 0 100 /dev/zram1 partition 4067412 0 100 /dev/zram2 partition 4067412 0 100 /dev/zram3 partition 4067412 0 100

[geckolinux]

Hi there, it looks like the 16.7GB of RAM is some sort of rounding error with the bytes --> GB conversion. As for the 17.2GB of swap, that's approximately correct, as the system uses zram swap by default and it creates about the same amount of maximum RAM swap space as your physical RAM. (It doesn't affect your actual available RAM, it just compresses items in the RAM if you start getting close to using all of your available physical RAM.)

[theArianit]

I thought it was something wrong with the numbers. In opensuse tw the swap size was 2 gigs, and somehow I thought I have seen the same number after installation of gecko. but if nothing is wrong then it's fine with me. thanks

[theArianit]

If I may add a question to this topic. I have read about this a bit and it seems like this is because of hibernation or for it. is that true? and how can I make use of hibernation, how can I enable it, or is it done automatically?

[geckolinux]

Hi, there's three kinds of swap:

• Physical swap partition on disk -- if hibernation is desired, the swap with hibernation option needs to be selected in Calamares during installation, and it will create a swap partition that is the same size as the amount of RAM.
• Swap file on disk -- This can also be selected during installation in Calamares, but it's not compatible with hibernation.
• Virtual compressed RAM swap (zRAM) -- This is dynamic and happens in RAM as needed, also not compatible with hibernation since the RAM gets wiped when powered off. GeckoLinux enables zRAM by default, vanilla openSUSE does not.

[theArianit]

so hibernation cannot be enabled in gecko?

[geckolinux]

• Physical swap partition on disk -- if hibernation is desired, the swap with hibernation option needs to be selected in Calamares during installation, and it will create a swap partition that is the same size as the amount of RAM.

[theArianit]

I wish I knew this during installation. thank you for the clarification

[tuxayo]

it just compresses items in the RAM if you start getting close to using all of your available physical RAM

Great, so it shouldn't be a perf issue for old CPUs? Unless most of the RAM is used which anyway would cause more perf issues than just compressing stuff.

[geckolinux]

Right, overall it's the best option, and definitely performs better than swapping to the disk. It's the same mechanism that Android devices have used for a long time now with their relatively limited RAM and CPU resources.