I always have to go to gparted and then turn my swap on. The swap space isn't used by default and if I turn the swap on, the swap is not used! How can I make the swap space be used by default at boot? 
Something happened to Swap; it is not used by default
swap;fstab
This information should be set in /etc/fstabYou want a line something like - /dev/sdb3  none  swap  sw  0 0 with the first item set to match your device details. Any swap lines with noauto will be ignored.I believe this configuration is fairly consistent between *nix systems, see man fstab for more info.