For normal users with a sufficient amount of RAM, is there any real reason to even have a swap file or swap partition? Or why shouldn’t they have one and set the swappiness to zero?
Depends on how you define “sufficient”. Having some amount of swap can be helpful for efficient use of RAM, but I personally prefer to use zram for those cases.
A swap partition can also be useful if you use hibernation.
For normal users with a sufficient amount of RAM, is there any real reason to even have a swap file or swap partition? Or why shouldn’t they have one and set the swappiness to zero?
Depends on how you define “sufficient”. Having some amount of swap can be helpful for efficient use of RAM, but I personally prefer to use zram for those cases.
A swap partition can also be useful if you use hibernation.
Hibernation needs a swap partition that’s at least the same size as the memory.
Nvm: vivid… already mentioned hibernation.
https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html
Swap offers a lot of advantages, given how cheap disk space is nowadays https://serverfault.com/questions/255661/linux-oom-disk-i-o-also-swap-what-is-it-good-for