zswap
Hacker ApprovedTied for most recommended of 3 kernel features
Compresses pages going to swap in RAM, cutting disk reads and writes; many people prefer it to zram and use it on low-RAM machines.
Compresses pages going to swap in RAM, cutting disk reads and writes; many people prefer it to zram and use it on low-RAM machines.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 94%
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.
- 16 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
Preferred over zram
“Zswap has improved to the point where it is now preferable over Zram.”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “The main point is to use zswap over swap plus zram.”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “The death and rebirth of my home server” “Zswap is better than ZRAM for this use case.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux” - Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead”
- Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead”
- Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead”
Cuts disk reads and writes
“This compresses everything going to swap, and decompresses it coming back: less disk reads and writes, and less space used.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop” “You should consider some sort of swap on ram like zswap rather than thrashing your nvme.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop” “having disk swap can actually decrease disk I/O”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths” Dynamically sized compressed pool
“zswap is dynamically managed by the kernel and zswap sends out compressed pages to swap”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide” “it's not a fixed RAM storage, it merely compresses pages in RAM up to a variable limit”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces” “It confers most of the benefits of zram swap, plus being able to evict to non-RAM”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers” Avoids freezing under memory pressure
“solves a lot of the issues with freezing under memory pressure”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “Current zswap+oomd behavior is the best choice imho.”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12” “Zswap is supposed to degrade more gracefully.”
Comment from 19 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
39 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Using Zswap might help you.”
“imposing latency spikes on old page access”
“zswap is way better than zram”
“Zswap has improved to the point where it is now preferable over Zram.”
“Zswap doesn't have that problem.”
“Zswap is even better than that.”
“I've expanded my zswap and disabled zram”
“Or zswap instead of zram.”
“solves a lot of the issues with freezing under memory pressure”
“Meanwhile zswap (of no relation with zfs) is free performance.”
“zswap will be polluting your SSD all the time”
“zram and swap together can lead to priority inversion”
“The main point is to use zswap over swap plus zram.”
“Zswap is better than ZRAM for this use case.”
“if disk-backed swap is in play, then zswap is the best option”
“My recommendation for RAM constrained systems would be to use zswap combined with a generous amount of swap space.”
“zswap is dynamically managed by the kernel and zswap sends out compressed pages to swap”
“Current zswap+oomd behavior is the best choice imho.”
“zswap works well in my experience. Don't need both.”
“Zsawp itself is enabled by default in Asahi.”
“an easy "compress my ram" option that plays nicely with cgroups”
“If you do, you'll want zswap instead.”
“The architecture of zswap does make more sense, because you might as well combine the low speed and latency of compression”
“Zswap is supposed to degrade more gracefully.”
“zswap many years ago would not handle hibernation "well"”
“it really does seem to make a difference”
“I had issues getting it to use zstd at boot. Not sure if it's a bug or some peculiarity with Debian.”
“Having two slightly different systems is weird.”
“With an SSD that cannot support even 10 MB/s of synchronous writes, it browns out”
“having disk swap can actually decrease disk I/O”
“zswap has been a great boon for one of my workloads”
“you should prefer zswap if you have a device that can be used for swap”
“it's not a fixed RAM storage, it merely compresses pages in RAM up to a variable limit”
“the pool size is limited by the amount of swap space you've allocated”
“worked great on my old laptop which had a max of 4GB RAM”
“Linux supports proper memory compression in the form of zswap”
“This compresses everything going to swap, and decompresses it coming back: less disk reads and writes, and less space used.”
“You should consider some sort of swap on ram like zswap rather than thrashing your nvme.”
“It confers most of the benefits of zram swap, plus being able to evict to non-RAM”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.