My Debian Squeeze system has been swapping a lot lately. I think web browsers -- mostly Google Chrome -- are to blame. I'm not sure switching entirely to Firefox will solve the problem. Web browsers eat resources.

To speed things up, I decided to reduce my "swappiness" to see how that affects system performance.

It's been a very long time since I've done it, so I Googled "swappiness in Debian," and came across my own entry from 2010 when I was running Ubuntu 10.04. I got my information from the Ubuntu community Swap FAQ, and you can too.

I followed the recipe on my Debian Squeeze system, changing swappiness from the default of 60 to 10 so the system will use swap less often.

So far, so good.

The next day: This is totally working. After six or so hours of my usual workload, I'm only using 1.2 MB of swap. Nice!

The next week: After a full day of computing, with lots of Google Chrome windows and tabs open all day (I barely used Firefox/Iceweasel today), doing some photo edits but no video editing, I'm using 1.4 GB of RAM and 24.8 MB of swap. I'd say the experiment in changing swappiness is a success.

I came across Debian project leader Stefano Zacchiroli's Bits from the DPL on Planet Debian -- the most recent bits also living on Stefano's blog and on a Debian mailing list.

The more interesting bits this month include a controversy over duplication between the Debian Multimedia archive and Debian proper.

Stefano suggests that what package belongs where be worked out, or that Debian Multimedia shed its Debian name and move on.

Read the rest of this post

Red Hat/Fedora have put a solution in place in order to ensure that Linux runs on systems that ship with secure boot. Other distributions are welcome to get in on the deal at each.

It was nice to see Debian's new diversity statement bake in the oven, as it were, on the mailing list, and now it's here:

• Announcement: Debian welcomes diversity
• The vote

The diversity statement itself is refreshingly brief:

Diversity Statement

The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community.

While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we value and encourage contributions from those with expertise in other areas, and welcome them into our community.