And why do I want this? And if I want this, why is it not the default already? SSDs have been mainstream for ten years I guess, so shouldn’t any current Linux installer do the right thing by now?
Because the default is set for healthy performance. But users in actual reality don’t care for raw performance but want responsive systems. If you are opening a browser to pass time while some longer process runs in the background, you are less interested in that background process being done 10% faster than in your browser not being sluggish.
PS: Sidenote… Many recommendations are based on older kernels. Since 5.8 swappiness is not measured from 0 to 100, but 0 to 200. So the 60 default is already half of what it was many years ago.
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
Open /etc/sysctl.conf for editing:
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
Add vm.swappiness=10 at the end and save the file.
Reboot your system and check the swappiness value:
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness # 10
And why do I want this? And if I want this, why is it not the default already? SSDs have been mainstream for ten years I guess, so shouldn’t any current Linux installer do the right thing by now?
Because the default is set for healthy performance. But users in actual reality don’t care for raw performance but want responsive systems. If you are opening a browser to pass time while some longer process runs in the background, you are less interested in that background process being done 10% faster than in your browser not being sluggish.
PS: Sidenote… Many recommendations are based on older kernels. Since 5.8 swappiness is not measured from 0 to 100, but 0 to 200. So the 60 default is already half of what it was many years ago.