zram
Hacker ApprovedTied for most recommended of 3 kernel features
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.
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.
45 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 69%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster than disk swap
“The performance of a zram device is so much faster than even the latest NVMe drives.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Origin of the rule that swap size should be 2x of the physical memory” “'Swapping' to ZRAM is far less painful than actual disk-backed swap.”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Reminder: Enable ZRAM on your Linux system to optimize RAM usage” “it was an improvement from on disk swap”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” Makes low-memory systems usable
“it was the difference between barely usable and very usable”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Zram as Swap” “it will almost double your effective RAM size with ease”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces” “makes it feel like 9GiB with no perceptible downside”
Comment from 11 Oct 2026 in “The RAM shortage is bringing back DDR4” - Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “The death and rebirth of my home server”
Quick to set up
“It takes a solid 45 seconds for me to enable zram (compressed RAM as swap) on a fresh Arch install.”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers” “Zram: install one additional package and forget.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths” Works on diskless or MMC-only systems
“The only times I use zram are when all I have to work with for storage is MMC”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers” “If a DRAMless consumer SSD is all that you have, better use zram.”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths” “You can use zram on a diskless system.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Modernizing Linux swapping: introducing the swap table”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
OOM kills when compressed swap fills
“this works extremely well but should you exhaust your zram swap serious problems may begin”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “Swap, ZRAM, Zswap and Hibernate on NixOS” “it works pretty well if you don't mind some otherwise preventable kills”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths” “With a zram-only setup, once zram is full, there is nowhere for anonymous pages to go.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths” Buggy and advised against regular use
“Zram is buggy and still advised against regular use”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12” “quoting instabilities and random weirdness”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Reminder: Enable ZRAM on your Linux system to optimize RAM usage”
Other kernel features people recommend
The two most recommended other kernel features, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 kernel features, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 55 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“makes it feel like 9GiB with no perceptible downside”
“this works extremely well but should you exhaust your zram swap serious problems may begin”
“zram is a good choice when data in RAM is very repetetive/compressible”
“I'd recommend at least zram to soften the OOM landing.”
“it was an improvement from on disk swap”
“In my experience it works really well.”
“I am typing right now on such a setup wityh 16 GiB ram”
“have never seen mem usage > 95%, even under absurd workloads and have never been oom-killed ever since”
“I calibrated the system to make do with the very generous zram compression ratio of 3”
“zram can create a very good buffer for that sort of thing”
“enabling zram is an improvement”
“adding ZRAM will fly on that machine”
“ZRAM does miracles under GNU/Linux”
“you'd want to do that on zram (compressed swap in RAM). It also make wonders.”
“Zram is buggy and still advised against regular use”
“zram + no swap is a surprisingly workable workaround IME”
“Google strongly recommends using zram on all devices, even on devices with a lot of RAM”
“quoting instabilities and random weirdness”
“'Swapping' to ZRAM is far less painful than actual disk-backed swap.”
“If a DRAMless consumer SSD is all that you have, better use zram.”
“zram definitely has some caveats with that setup”
“Zram: install one additional package and forget.”
“it works pretty well if you don't mind some otherwise preventable kills”
“I use simple bash script to first use fast compression and after 1h recompress it using much stronger compression.”
“zramctl gives me live statistics of used and compressed size.”
“zram + earlyoomd can be tuned not to brown out (at the expense of OOM kills on a subjectively perfectly well performing system)”
“With a zram-only setup, once zram is full, there is nowhere for anonymous pages to go.”
“zram works best when paired with a user-space OOM killer”
“zram swap otoh should be relatively 'free'”
“it will almost double your effective RAM size with ease”
“on Linux you can actually do that by enabling zram”
“If you have a bunch of stuff running in the background it will help a lot.”
“The performance of a zram device is so much faster than even the latest NVMe drives.”
“it was the difference between barely usable and very usable”
“You can use zram on a diskless system.”
“It is not obsolete. It's also useful for other things.”
“Because I'd rather compress ram when running low on memory rather than swapping to my disks.”
“I'm working with mostly incompressible AI models so it really didn't help.”
“The only times I use zram are when all I have to work with for storage is MMC”
“It takes a solid 45 seconds for me to enable zram (compressed RAM as swap) on a fresh Arch install.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.