Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: System becomes almost unusable when compling c++ code

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de>]

On Freitag, 3. August 2007, Richard Freeman wrote:
> Duncan wrote:
> > If you have lots of memory (2 gigs or better, 4 gigs is nice, I have 8
> > but that's overkill), strongly consider setting up your PORTAGE_TMPDIR
> > (/var/tmp by default) on tmpfs.
>
> Actually, as long as you have enough swap your RAM doesn't really
> matter.  In the worst case it just swaps to disk, which is what it would
> be doing anyway if you didn't have a tmpfs.  Even if only 10% of the
> short-lived files didn't make it to disk it would be a huge savings in
> IO waits.

emm, from my very personal point of view: no

swap is horrible slow. Its use must be avoided at any cost. Swap sucks. 
Everything is faster than accessing swap. So hitting the disk to read or 
write some files is IMHO better than hitting the disk to shove X into swap.

X in swap is another problem. You can be sure, if X is forced into swap, 
because gcc uses up all ram for itself, everything sucks. Mouse is jerky, 
windows need ages to get displayed.

Everything that makes swapping more likely is bad advise and shall be avoided.
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