zswap-vs-zram-when-to-use-what

[nick65go]

main article here : https://chrisdown.name/2026/03/24/zswap-vs-zram-when-to-use-what.html

and some user summary here:
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/distributions/1624087-kde-linux-hardening-their-os-against-updates-making-systems-unbootable#post1625266
" Here's a TL;DR (my understanding):
zswap is preferable in almost every situation. ZRAM only somewhat works in specific cases, like embedded or Android. For ZRAM to work, you must NOT have a disk swap, and need a usespace OOM killer, otherwise, you'll have very bad time when it starts to fill. Fedora and Android, notably, use ZRAM, because they made the decision to completely eliminate disk swap, which meant that zswap just was not an option, so they made sure to minimize the issues that come with ZRAM (read the blog for details). With that said,zswap is said to be receiving a disk-free mode down the line, making ZRAM completely obsolete, and so it's receiving less and less support.

In conclusion, zswap is a MUCH safer, and often better (performance and stability) option, but if you have specific constraints (completely avoiding swap), you can use ZRAM on desktop, but must be extremely careful, and even that only untill zsawp gets the feature to work without disk swap itself."