It's more complicated than that, same as PAGING on Windows. It's about offloading some of the less accessed data from RAM onto slower hardware.
replyYou can compress the swap, so you can squezze a bit more by using CPU in that tiny amount of read you do.
> swap is used when you run out of ram
replyThis is not correct. Swap is not a RAM overflow.
> Swap is not generally about getting emergency memory, it's about making memory reclamation egalitarian and efficient. In fact, using it as "emergency memory" is generally actively harmful.
Zram creates a compressed RAM disk.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram
replyIt's also not the optimal choice in most situations: https://chrisdown.name/2026/03/24/zswap-vs-zram-when-to-use-...
replyThe main point is to use zswap over swap plus zram. The sd card usecase definitely doesnt want swap to disk, compressed or otherwise, so zram or no swap are the options.
replyMoving swap off of sdcard is indeed a good plan.
But since swapping is done when ram is depleted, using a ramdisk for it (which uses ram) is ... exactly what you dont want.
Since OP states they have disks attached to the machine as well, the better thing is use a partition there for swap.
replyExactly. The previous install of the system had no swap at all so enabling zram is an improvement.
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