# zram

31 Hacker News commenters recommended zram and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend zram for compressed swap in RAM that beats disk swap on low-memory machines, though it runs out once its compressed space is full.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster than disk swap (3 comments): "The performance of a zram device is so much faster than even the latest NVMe drives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160888)) "'Swapping' to ZRAM is far less painful than actual disk-backed swap." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47829439)) "it was an improvement from on disk swap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49663484))
- Makes low-memory systems usable (4 comments): "it was the difference between barely usable and very usable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931678)) "it will almost double your effective RAM size with ease" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47286170)) "makes it feel like 9GiB with no perceptible downside" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50043966))
- Quick to set up (2 comments): "It takes a solid 45 seconds for me to enable zram (compressed RAM as swap) on a fresh Arch install." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46369302)) "Zram: install one additional package and forget." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507954))
- Works on diskless or MMC-only systems (3 comments): "The only times I use zram are when all I have to work with for storage is MMC" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46372586)) "If a DRAMless consumer SSD is all that you have, better use zram." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47511697)) "You can use zram on a diskless system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46912193))

## What people warn about

- OOM kills when compressed swap fills (3 comments): "this works extremely well but should you exhaust your zram swap serious problems may begin" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825812)) "it works pretty well if you don't mind some otherwise preventable kills" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507149)) "With a zram-only setup, once zram is full, there is nowhere for anonymous pages to go." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47501782))
- Buggy and advised against regular use (2 comments): "Zram is buggy and still advised against regular use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328111)) "quoting instabilities and random weirdness" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47832023))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [zswap](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zswap.md): 31 recommend
- [MGLRU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mglru.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "zram", https://hackerapproved.com/p/zram/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).