UNIX is far more bulletproof and water-resistant and torpedo proof than anything else out there. Its the whole concept of it. Many cannot get over or around it let alone wrap the mind around it.

There are multiple reasons, yet many cannot get over the fact that privilege separation *just works*. The SWAP thingy you are worried about is the UNIX way to move things to the side desk, that have not been used recently, versus taking up room on the main desk and making it messy.

Main Memory == Currently working on and actively using area

Swap Memory (on disk) == Easily accessible side table/desk, where stuff is still open but not actively worked on exist.

Disk == the Storage Cabinet where all the stuff is stored in hard form and takes a bit to retrieve.

Just to let you know Ashton, I've got some 10+ year old servers that have *REALLY* old Linux on them. Some have been up and running since the last time they were shut down in November of 2006 (during a re-racking that had to happen). I've only got one that is giving me irritation and should probably be rebooted, but its got the case of the sporadic problems, nothing solidly wrong, just a few (of the HYARGE numbers of them) cron jobs failing randomly. Nothing repeatable, but its a sign that memory leaks are happening. Its the price you pay for uptime and stability (1000+ days).

So, your worry about accumulating cruft in the OS Bowels is unfounded, unless you are installing and uninstalling programs willy nilly. Doing updates and your core programs like FireFox and OpenOffice (I'd like to suggest iWork... as its very nice for its job), the installation replaces the previous stuff and is very nicely done. Since OSX doesn't have most of the downfalls of Windows in this regard... duly ignore it.