[wahern]

Yeah. I always disable overcommit (notwithstanding that Linux cannot provide perfectly accurate strict memory accounting), and I'd prefer not to use swap, but Linux VM maintainers have consistently stated that they've designed and tuned the VM subsystem with swap in mind. Is swap necessary in the abstract? No. Is swap necessary on Linux? No. But don't be surprised if Linux doesn't do what you'd expect in the absence of swap, and don't expect Linux to put much if any effort into improving performance in the absence of swap.

I've never ran into trouble on my personal servers, but I've worked at places that have, especially when running applications that tax the VM subsystem, e.g. the JVM and big Java apps. If one wonders why swap would be useful even if applications never allocate, even in the aggregate, more anonymous memory than system RAM, one of the reasons is the interaction with the buffer cache and eviction under pressure.

[throw0101c]

> […] but Linux VM maintainers have consistently stated that they've designed and tuned the VM subsystem with swap in mind.

There is a citation for this that can be shown to skeptics?