alt Hacker NewsNone of the answers are satisfying to me, tbh.
I install more RAM so I can swap less. If I have 8 GB, then the 2x rule means I should have a 16 GB swap file, giving me 24 GB of total memory to work with. If I then stumble upon a good deal on RAM and upgrade to 32 GB, then if I never had memory problems with 24 GB, then I should be able to completely disable paging and not have a problem. But instead, the advice would be to increase my paging file to 64 GB!?
It doesn't make any sense. At all.
It's not meant for that kind of comparison. It's a variant of Simpson's paradox. Any individual system with a fixed set of tasks needs less swap when it gets more RAM. But when you look at the aggregate of systems, the systems that have more tasks to run get more RAM to run them, and systems with fewer tasks get less RAM. And since more tasks need more swap, everything scales together (though often not linearly).