Do you have knoppix installed or running from CD? Linux uses the hard drive for swap space. You should have a dedicated linux swap partition on a hard drive. Windows basically does the same but it calls it "virtual memory" and can be specified as well. This is not a new concept. It may be new to the casual windows user who has never broken from the microsoft mold but power users are very familiar. Oh and swap space is safe and frees up memory for other tasks. Hope this helps