Linux supports virtual memory, that is, using a disk as an extension of RAM so that the effective size of usable memory grows correspondingly. … The part of the hard disk that is used as virtual memory is called the swap space. Linux can use either a normal file in the filesystem or a separate partition for swap space.

Does OS use virtual memory?

While copying virtual memory into physical memory, the OS divides memory with a fixed number of addresses into either pagefiles or swap files. Each page is stored on a disk, and when the page is needed, the OS copies it from the disk to main memory and translates the virtual addresses into real addresses.

How much virtual memory do I have Linux?

Entering cat /proc/meminfo in your terminal opens the /proc/meminfo file. This is a virtual file that reports the amount of available and used memory. It contains real-time information about the system’s memory usage as well as the buffers and shared memory used by the kernel.