[feature request] Store/load game launchers into "swap space" only, and not ram

[DuckersMcQuack]

I just realized, as swap space is used as emergency ram, and super slow, could you make a script for game launchers that loads and stores them straight to swap, and actually keep them there, instead of ram for ubi/rockstar games? As those launchers doesn't load/read/write much at all, apart from launcher updates now and then. it's just simply there to be a memory hogging DRM. So instead of us having to waste the little actual ram steam deck has for a unnecessary launcher, have it instead be stored/loaded onto the increased swap space? That way, only the game itself will be loaded onto the actual ram. That way the 1-2GB launchers usually eat up can then be used for important data instead, like textures and game assets.

And if this is quite doable, Is this something you could try doing for gamescope as well? So that the only things stored in actual ram is crucial often read data, and other not as needed stuff can be stored permanently on the nvme , like GUI elements and game icons maybe that doesn't change much. So all deckOS will be doing is just read from the main storage only and not load anything not necessary into the actual ram.

[CryoByte33]

As far as I'm aware, there isn't a way to selectively store certain data in swap, but if it's accessed rarely enough it would be one of the first things stored there anyway. Things like Rockstar and Ubi Launcher are unfortunately called upon often enough for DRM purposes that it would likely be pulled to memory, though, which is pretty annoying.

As for GameScope, it has just about the lowest overhead it can to do the job it does and would likely cause games to perform worse if limited by swap speed, although this is speculation since I can't swap individual binaries.

[DuckersMcQuack]

Gotchu. Well, was worth a ask :)

As i experienced AC valhalla got quite bad performance after i upped swap to 16GB. It now uses 18.5GB total memory and got quite bad stutters/fluctuations in the fps to where i had to pin the fps to 40