VMM: Graphical Tool to Change Swappiness in Ubuntu

Last updated: August 18, 2013

Want to configure swappiness in Ubuntu? Well, there’s a simple graphical tool to change swappiness to improve Ubuntu performance.

Change Swappiness in Ubuntu

Swappiness controls how often the swap file is used. A swappiness setting of 0 means that the disk will be avoided unless absolutely necessary (run out of memory), while a swappiness setting of 100 means that programs will be swapped to disk almost instantly.

The default value of swappiness is 60, which means the swap file will be used fairly often if the memory usage is around half of RAM.

If you have a large memory of RAM, you can reduce the swappiness to improve Ubuntu performance. For example, turn the vaule down to 10 or 15. The swap file will then only be used when the RAM usage is around 80 or 90 percent.

The command to check the value of swappiness is:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

You can change it by editing /etc/sysctl.conf and changing the line vm.swappiness = 60

To install Virtual Memory Modifier (VMM), the GUI tool

For Ubuntu 13.04 and its derivatives, download and double-click to install the Deb:

vmm_0.0.5.0-1ubuntu1_all.deb

For Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, and their derivatives. Run below commands one by one to install vmm from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao 

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install vmm

Twitter

I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via [email protected] Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1 |