> If you have a swap file created by the installer then you do not get to specify
Why should we care about what the installer does when it's trivial to change later? You said this is "bad advice, except for very simplistic scenarios" but people not in "very simplistic scenarios" are perfectly capable of running a few shell commands.
Aside from which, typical home users are in very simplistic scenarios. The Mint installer defaults to a single partition aside from what's required for booting, and a swapfile at /swapfile. And tons of Mint users are doing just fine with that. They are not realistically going to distro-hop because it won't realistically solve any problems for them.
Your overall argument seems to depend on accommodating some hypothetical power users who nevertheless want the installer to get it right for them. But in this case, why not petition the distro to improve the installer instead?
> This has been standard practice since the 1960s!
And? the point here is to identify a benefit of putting swap on a carefully chosen partition that cannot be realized by putting swap on a file at a carefully chosen path (since that choice also implicitly puts it on a specific partition).
> You can but suddenly permissions and ownership become issues.
I can't fathom why. I said /home, not ~.
> Point missed. ... Incorrect assumption. ... Have you read the other comments?
I consider this sort of commentary incivil (and the commenting guidelines support me in this).
I also did not make an assumption at all; I considered one of two alternative meanings without introducing it with the word "if". That's why the second possibility does start with "if". This is just a rhetorical technique, dismissing the most absurd interpretations first exactly because they are easier to dismiss.
Why should we care about what the installer does when it's trivial to change later? You said this is "bad advice, except for very simplistic scenarios" but people not in "very simplistic scenarios" are perfectly capable of running a few shell commands.
Aside from which, typical home users are in very simplistic scenarios. The Mint installer defaults to a single partition aside from what's required for booting, and a swapfile at /swapfile. And tons of Mint users are doing just fine with that. They are not realistically going to distro-hop because it won't realistically solve any problems for them.
Your overall argument seems to depend on accommodating some hypothetical power users who nevertheless want the installer to get it right for them. But in this case, why not petition the distro to improve the installer instead?
> This has been standard practice since the 1960s!
And? the point here is to identify a benefit of putting swap on a carefully chosen partition that cannot be realized by putting swap on a file at a carefully chosen path (since that choice also implicitly puts it on a specific partition).
> You can but suddenly permissions and ownership become issues.
I can't fathom why. I said /home, not ~.
> Point missed. ... Incorrect assumption. ... Have you read the other comments?
I consider this sort of commentary incivil (and the commenting guidelines support me in this).
I also did not make an assumption at all; I considered one of two alternative meanings without introducing it with the word "if". That's why the second possibility does start with "if". This is just a rhetorical technique, dismissing the most absurd interpretations first exactly because they are easier to dismiss.