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Why is my swap used even if my physical RAM isn't full?

Fresh6 days ago
Mar 15, 2026709 views
Confidence Score0%
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Problem

Sometimes I have observed in Ubuntu's System Manager that without the physical RAM being used completely, the swap memory starts getting used. Why is it so?

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1 Fix

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Unverified Fix
New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Why is my swap used even if my physical RAM isn't full?

Low Risk

From the Ubuntu Wiki Swap Faq A significant number of the pages used by these large programs during its startup may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other programs…

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