No more swap partition!

I am now installing Ubuntu without a swap partition and I use a swap file afterward.

Here’s the details from Ubuntu Swap FAQ:

Should I reinstall with more swap?

  • Definitely no.
  • With the 2.6 kernel, “a swap file is just as fast as a swap partition.”(Wikipedia:Paging, LKML).

How do I add more swap?

  • Usually, people associate swap with a swap partition, maybe because they’ve been proposed to create a swap partition on install. In fact any file can be used as a swapping device, be it a partition or a conventional file. If you’re considering responsiveness, my advice: add more RAM. Swapping to a partition or a file won’t change anything.
  • We will add more swap by adding a swap file.
  • Adding more swap is a four-step process :
    • a- Creating a file the size you want.
    • b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device.
    • c- Adding the swap to the running system.
    • d- Making the change permanent.
  • We will consider (as an example) a 512 M swap need.
  • a- Creating a file the size you want :
    • We will create a /mnt/512M.swap swap file.
      sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M count=512
      • What is important here is count=512, which means we want our file to contain 512 blocks of bs=1M, which means block size = 1 MegaBytes.
      • Be careful *not* to do this dd of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M seek=512 count=0
        Though the file grows to 512M immediately,it will have holes that makes it unusable.
  • b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device :
    sudo mkswap /mnt/512M.swap
  • c- Adding the swap to the running system :
    sudo swapon /mnt/512M.swap
    • You can see with “cat /proc/meminfo” that your additionnal swap is now available.
  • d- Making the change permanent :
    • edit your /etc/fstab:
      gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
    • and add this line at the end of the file:
      /mnt/512M.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0
    • save and reboot

Ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon USB Graphic Display

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My HTPC lack a graphical display. I want to see the play length of my movies, the temp of my CPU and the upload/download information of my torrents.

I first thought to purchase a VFD based display, but aren’t we after year 2000? Therefore, a greenish old style display is not really appealing.

But, I found what I needed at Matrix Orbital, a Canadian based company specialized in VFD AND LCD display.

They have a complete line of character USB display. And the all mighty Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon USB Graphic Display.

All software and documentation is available on their website: http://www.matrixorbital.com/