Install zram-tools by deafult

[WooHooWasTaken]

I am running Linux Mint on a laptop, and I have 8GB of ram. That may sound like a lot for some, but it's not, and 2GB are allocated to the iGPU. I effectively have 6GB of RAM, which is a problem when trying to game or do high-performance tasks. Because I have a nVME drive, I expanded the default SWAP partition from 2GB to 8GB, and that helped a bit, but experienced slowdowns often. I was chatting with an AI about my computer and it suggested installing zram-tools. I did, and the effect was immediate and dramatic. I no longer have slowdowns, and I barely even use SWAP anymore.

zram-tools increases effective RAM space by compressing RAM data. It uses a very fast and efficient compression algorithm, so that it is barely slower than normal RAM and it doesn't even use much CPU. As I talked with various other people, I realized that they had no idea that zram-tools existed. zram-tools is a very small package with a very big impact.

My idea is that, during the installation of Linux Mint, the installer checks to see how much RAM is on the computer. If it decides that the RAM is insufficient, it installs zram-tools to make RAM more efficient. I think a good threshold is 8GB.

But that's just my idea. What do you think?

[Fantu]

A very good and useful article from a kernel developer working on Linux memory management:
https://chrisdown.name/2026/03/24/zswap-vs-zram-when-to-use-what.html

[okaestne]

Very informative, thank you for sharing. Looking forward to the upcoming backing-store-less zswap for eMMC and sdcard-based systems :)