I've yet to find any desktop workload that benefits from anything higher than a swappiness as low as possible. Unfortunately setting it to zero can rarely lead to unexplained stalls in the VM so use 10. -ck --- mm/vmscan.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) Index: linux-3.2-ck1/mm/vmscan.c =================================================================== --- linux-3.2-ck1.orig/mm/vmscan.c 2012-01-16 10:07:27.813097272 +1100 +++ linux-3.2-ck1/mm/vmscan.c 2012-01-16 10:07:31.737097001 +1100 @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ struct scan_control { /* * From 0 .. 100. Higher means more swappy. */ -int vm_swappiness = 60; +int vm_swappiness = 10; long vm_total_pages; /* The total number of pages which the VM controls */ static LIST_HEAD(shrinker_list);