[kwlug-disc] zRAM on older machines?

[Chris Frey]

My laptop is a thinkpad T510 with 4GB RAM.  I stopped using zram
because I would often hit tight memory pressure, which would leave
my system frozen for some time, while using straight swap would
"clear" faster, as I recall.

If I had the luxury of 16GB, maybe I'd leave it on, but probably not.
It's a cool idea, but in thrashing situations, it doesn't pay off.

- Chris



On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 03:15:11PM -0400, William Park via kwlug-disc wrote:
> Yes, my desktop is i3-4170 (Haswell, 4th gen) and 16GB (DDR3).  I have
> entire RAM as zRAM, which I think is the default for CachyOS, because I
> don't remember modifying this setting.
> 
> - Never had  OOM.
> - No issue with "sleep".  It wakes up on keyboard activity, but not on mouse
> activity.
> 
> 
> On 2026-05-25 14:51, Charles M wrote:
> > I'm wondering if anyone on the list has been using zRAM on older
> > hardware (Intel 3rd to 6th gen)? I was looking into it recently
> > thinking it might be beneficial for some of the older systems we
> > rebuild in CR. The pitch for it seems to be that it:
> > 
> > Helps reduce wear on SSDs
> > Reduces lag & freezing on older systems
> > Can improve performance on slower devices (I didn't notice a
> > difference in boot times on a 3rd gen with 8GB and a 2.5" SSD in my
> > testing)
> > 
> > I was a bit confused when it came to the claims around out of memory
> > situations, I saw info that suggested it helped with OOM, and info
> > that suggested it contributed to OOM (which seems to be the more
> > likely since it's in RAM)
> > 
> > Does enabling zRAM cause issues with systems that are put to sleep?
> > What about conflicts with tools like tlp (ThinkPad)?
> > 
> > Does anyone have zRAM configured on their laptop/desktop?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Charles
> > 
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> 
> 

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