There are some occasions when you may need swap, but I think a general attitude nowadays is: Wait till you eventually run into them, and fix the swap problem then, when it has occurred. OTOH, with a 44GB partition available, you could of course set aside some of it for swap. Size is entirely dependent on the use. 1GB used to go a long way, and if your processor is 32 bits, above 4 is normally too much...