The use of the swap memory by default on Kernel 2.6.xx is set to 60% that means that the system will use intensively the swap memory. This sounds good if we have a small amount of memory (around 512MB or less) and lot of load on our PC especially if it is working as server. But if we have plenty of RAM (at least 1GB), as I do which is 2GB, and we are using our PC as desktop machine for daily use, we can change the percentage of swap to be utilized. This setting will increase the performance of Linux experience.
This is valid for quite a lot os distributions inlcuding openSUSE, Debian, Fedora and CentOS.

On a Terminal do this as root (use sudo if running Ubuntu)

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

You should see 60. Now change it to 10

sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10

Now is time to work for some minutes with some applications if you see that is better, you can make the changes permanent.

vim /etc/sysctl.conf

and add this line at the end (let me know if it is better to insert this in other file for openSUSE distribution)

vm.swappiness=10

Related: Reduce your Linux Memory Footprint

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