Linux Mint Forums

I want to boost my RAM from 4GB to 8GB.
What are the most common problems which I may face ?

I use Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on HP-Pavillion dv6- 6155tx.

Aside from making sure you pick a RAM module that is compatible with your system, and its current RAM modules, you would really only need to be concerned with one thing. Namely, if you want to be able to hibernate your computer (suspend to disk) you are recommended to have a swap partition equal in size to your RAM.

So if you increase your RAM, you should check how big your swap space is and possibly enlarge it. To check, open a terminal and run: On the last line, the first number shows the total number of MiB of RAM (should be 8192 at least if you install 8 GiB RAM). To enlarge it if needed, boot your computer from the Linux Mint installation ISO and use GParted from there to resize the swap partition.

But if you aren't using hibernate, no issues

Edit: you might have to run the following command from the Linux Mint installation ISO, from a terminal, to disable it using your system's swap partition. Else GParted will not let you resize it.

xenopeek wrote:Aside from making sure you pick a RAM module that is compatible with your system, and its current RAM modules, you would really only need to be concerned with one thing. Namely, if you want to be able to hibernate your computer (suspend to disk) you are recommended to have a swap partition equal in size to your RAM.

So if you increase your RAM, you should check how big your swap space is and possibly enlarge it. To check, open a terminal and run:

Code: Select all

free -m

On the last line, the first number shows the total number of MiB of RAM (should be 8192 at least if you install 8 GiB RAM). To enlarge it if needed, boot your computer from the Linux Mint installation ISO and use GParted from there to resize the swap partition.

But if you aren't using hibernate, no issues

Edit: you might have to run the following command from the Linux Mint installation ISO, from a terminal, to disable it using your system's swap partition. Else GParted will not let you resize it.

Code: Select all

sudo swapoff -a

That is interesting. I'm glad you brought that up about the swap partition. And here I was thinking swap was useless nowadays. So that's what it's for.

xenopeek wrote:Aside from making sure you pick a RAM module that is compatible with your system, and its current RAM modules, you would really only need to be concerned with one thing. Namely, if you want to be able to hibernate your computer (suspend to disk) you are recommended to have a swap partition equal in size to your RAM.

So if you increase your RAM, you should check how big your swap space is and possibly enlarge it. To check, open a terminal and run:

Code: Select all

free -m

On the last line, the first number shows the total number of MiB of RAM (should be 8192 at least if you install 8 GiB RAM). To enlarge it if needed, boot your computer from the Linux Mint installation ISO and use GParted from there to resize the swap partition.

But if you aren't using hibernate, no issues

Edit: you might have to run the following command from the Linux Mint installation ISO, from a terminal, to disable it using your system's swap partition. Else GParted will not let you resize it.

Code: Select all

sudo swapoff -a

I agree , the swap partitition thingy is a nice touch !!