Linux needs swap if you run out of ram its choices are

• out of memory killer will kill a process (loads of processes are excluded)
• it will clear out a page from cache to disk
• it will use swap space

use free to see memory and swap usage

to create a swap use a free partition and then use the

 mkswap partition_name

you then have to add it to fstab once there you can use

 swapon -a 

to enable it use

<swapon -s </code> to check it