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Well, 320MB isn't much for Linux or XP these days, but that shouldn't be a problem... especially on the Linux side if you run xfce, flux or similar.
Recompiling the kernel for more RAM? Well there is a highmem-lowmem option, lowmem applies to something like 896M and under (not an exact number), whereas highmem is anything above that. Using the highmem option is supposed to create some overhead, but it shouldn't be a big factor. There's also a '1GB lowmem' option for people that have 1GB exactly in their machines-- it enables that amount without using the highmem option.
Other than that I don't know why you would need to recompile the kernel. Depending on the RAM amount you may have had to pass options to lilo/grub as well, but with 320MB that shouldn't be an issue.
Now as for swap size, the 1.5 thing is just a guideline, and honestly if you had 2GB of RAM I would say 3GB of swap would _definitely_ be overkill. Ultimately it comes down to the applications. I usually just create a 1GB swap partition on my Linux machine, which has 1GB of RAM. It rarely if ever gets more than 75% full, and I run a lot of applications simultaneously - usually having 20 or so firefox windows/tabs open, kmail, gaim, xchat, and others all running. So I guess you could say that 1GB is a waste on a 320MB machine, but keep in mind you may upgrade the RAM later and then you'll have to figure out a way to enlarge the swap partition if you've made it too small. (It's possible to use a swap file instead of a partition on Linux, but I really don't recommend it)
OTOH on my Windows box with the same amount of RAM, the swap tends to fill up a bit quicker, even though it's set to 1.5GB instead of just 1. I think this is due to two factors - for one, it's my opinion that Windows tends to swap a lot more in the first place (boot XP and look at how much swap is allocated right off the bat), and secondly, on my Windows machine I'm almost always running games or graphics apps, which understandably are pretty memory hungry. Running the same apps on a Linux machine (if they existed), I think 1GB swap would still be fine, but probably not less.
Also keep in mind that Photoshop has its own swap file, so if you're a PS user that's something you don't have to worry about when considering swap size.
edit - to lordofduct - you're right about compiling the kernel with optimizations for your specific processor/architecture, but amount of memory should make no difference at all other than the highmem/lowmem option I mentioned above. |
