New user questions

#1

Hello I am a new user of Endless OS. I really like the interface which is clean and easy and i would like to continue use this OS rather than installing windows (:smiley: ) I want to make some changes in this OS. Likewise in windows we could use the preferences for adjusting memory usage or use HDD as a ram, so i wanna know can we do the same in this OS. is there any way to make it more fast ??

I used to work on autocad in windows, is there any provision in this OS to run the same.

Kindly guide me with your valuable feedback.
Thanks in advance.

Regards
Simrat Singh

Uninstall Endless (I want to change it to Windows 10 PRO)
#2

Hi,

On the question of using the HDD as RAM, this is known as “swap space” in linux. These instructions are for Ubuntu but they should work for Endless as well. I would only recommend doing that if you have some experience with the Linux command line, or if you’re on a machine that doesn’t have important data that isn’t backed up, since mistyping commands can be destructive. Also note that Endless creates swap space by default if the hard drive capacity is above a certain threshold, so check if it’s already enabled (by running free -h in the Terminal).

#3

That’s a pity that Endless OS does not automatically create a swap partition like usually GNU/Linux distributions do. Also /home would be useful to put onto separate partition - it would much more disperse possible risks. Swap as separate partition does not affect the operating system and does not slow down it with fragmentation (like you probably often see under MS Windows if it has default setting like swap file on system partition). If root filesystem will somehow damage then data at /home will survive. I understand that in case of SSD disk it would be understandable that swap is not created. But in case of regular SATA etc drive it would be reasonable. This would add one more positively endless dimension to Endless OS. Please consider to add separate swap and /home partition.

#4

Besides - can we create a swap in Endless OS? E.g. like a file?

#5

Here is one example how I added a swap file:
fallocate -l 3G /var/3GiB.swp #create a 3 GiB swap file to writable area
chmod 600 /var/3GiB.swp #change permissions for security reasons
mkswap /var/3GiB.swp #format the file as swap
echo ‘/var/3GiB.swp none swap sw 0 0’| tee -a /etc/fstab #use swap automatically at boot
cat /etc/fstab #check the fstab to ensure the line is added
swapon /var/3GiB.swp #activate swap manually
swapon #check activated swap spaces
echo ‘vm.swappiness = 10’ >> /etc/sysctl.conf #change swap usage efficiency at boot
cat /etc/sysctl.conf #check whether the line is added
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness #check current swappiness value
echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness #change current swappiness value
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness #check current swappiness value again
reboot #reboot to ensure the changes will work
More reading at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

#6

As @mwleeds said, Endless OS does do this on first boot, if there is enough free space on the drive. At present “enough” means 100 GiB.

#7

To be honest, that laptop had ~40 GiB of hard disk - so if there is smaller disk than 100 GiB then I understand, the swap is not created. Another issue is that in such case the swap will be created on the same partition as system, which is not good in the sense of fragmentation. Would prefer as a separate partition and I guess many of IT specialists will say the same. If I want to change it then I need to use e.g. Gparted or similar tool to reduce the root partition to make space for separate swap and possibly also for separate /home

Some links on that topic:

#8

The swap created at first boot is a separate partition at the end of the disk, not a file on the root filesystem.

#9