vm.swappiness [1] could be what you're looking for. I find the default value of 60 leaves my desktop more prone to swapping out than I would like (but then fire

vm.swappiness [1] could be what you're looking for. I find the default value of 60 leaves my desktop more prone to swapping out than I would like (but then firefox consuming >15gb of ram leaves it little choice). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness