Unraveling the Historical Roots: Why Was Swap Size Recommended as Twice Physical Memory?
This news item, published on February 25, 2026, from Hacker News, points to a discussion on Retrocomputing Stack Exchange regarding the historical origins of the common recommendation to set swap space at twice the size of physical RAM. The original content provided is simply 'Comments,' indicating that the linked discussion likely contains user comments and insights into this long-standing system administration guideline. The article itself does not provide an answer but rather highlights the existence of a community discussion attempting to trace the rationale behind this specific swap size rule.
The news, dated February 25, 2026, and sourced from Hacker News, directs attention to a specific thread on Retrocomputing Stack Exchange. The core subject of this discussion is the historical genesis of the widely recognized guideline suggesting that a system's swap partition should be configured to be twice the size of its physical memory. The provided original content for this news piece is succinctly stated as 'Comments,' implying that the linked Stack Exchange page is primarily composed of user contributions, discussions, and potentially historical anecdotes or technical explanations from the retrocomputing community. This indicates that the news item serves as a pointer to a community-driven effort to understand the rationale and evolution of this particular system configuration rule, rather than providing a definitive answer itself. The absence of further detail in the original news content suggests that the value lies in the external discussion it references.