Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Windows 11 vs Ubuntu vs Fedora 39 vs Arch Linux - Speed Test! (youtu.be)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Even though different Linux distros are often fairly close in terms of real-life performance and all of them have a clear advantage over Windows in many use cases, we can't reject the fact that Arch Linux has undoubtedly won the competition. And now I'm so glad to have another reason to proudly say "I use Arch btw"

::: It was a joke of course :::

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The disagreement here might be a semantic one. When people say "swap" they're usually referring to the swap partition on disk, not just any memory that can be used to "spill" to.

What you are describing with zram serves a fundamentally different function from swap space. If the OS dumps its memory to swap, the PC can lose power and still recover. If it compresses LRU memory to zram, and loses power, it cannot recover.

Both are useful in low memory situations, but swap covers more than that. Most familiar with swap space would agree that its location on a nonvolatile disk rather than in volatile memory is critical to what makes it "swap" space.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

"Some of the use cases include /tmp storage, use as swap disks, various caches under /var and maybe many more. :)"

https://docs.kernel.org/6.1/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I think this is like calling a usb-connected flash drive a 'usb'. That's one of the use cases, but not purpose of the thing. (This sounded better in my head, it's more like calling a usb port a 'flash drive')

Better one - Firefox's use cases include watching videos but you wouldn't call it a video player.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think maybe you think I said "zram offers a subset of features of swap space". Rather, zram offers a fundamentally different function from swap space as it resides in memory rather than on disk. It does not and cannot replace the function of disk-based swap space.

Edit: again, I don't want to argue semantics, generally when people say "swap space" they mean the on-disk partition and not just any memory that can be spilled to.

TIL that zram actually does advertise itself as somewhere you can swap to, and generally their terminology is correct, but I think most Linux users colloquially understand swap space as residing in nonvolatile memory.