[kwlug-disc] zRAM on older machines?

[Charles M]

Thanks Chris, this is good to know. We normally have a minimum of 8GB
on all machines, but the odd time we get something like a Yoga 2 where
the RAM is soldered with no upgrade options.

On Mon, 25 May 2026 at 20:34, Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:
>
> 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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-- 
Charles
Mastodon: @chaslinux at techhub.social