Why is there a need for a swap partitionn?

[mjsmithz]

i have convinced a friend of mine to take the plunge and check ou linux and i was showing him my setup and he asked about the swap partition and asked why it was needed and i cant remember anyone wanna help me explain

[endoalpha]

virtual memory (ram)
Same as the swap file in windows. in linux, it is out on a separate partition, while windows scatters it throughout the filesystem(by default)

[AussieJohn]

It is the equivalent of the Page file in Windows and is used when an operation has insufficient available memory. The computer uses the Swap partition as substitute memory by passing data in and out of as it requires. The data is not stored any longer than it requires to complete the task so if you were to look in there you would most likely find nothing.

If you have a huge amount of memory you could theoretically do without a swap partition which was born out of the days when installed memory was extremely expensive for small amounts of memory.