Fedora Workstation 33 Aiming To Have SWAP-On-ZRAM By Default

Fedora IoT already uses swap-on-ZRAM by default given IoT devices are often running with limited amounts of RAM, but for Fedora Workstation 33 the developers are looking at enabling SWAP-on-ZRAM by default for all new installations.

SWAP-on-ZRAM is for compressing the swap space in RAM leading to lower memory utilization / more RAM left for the applications/services themselves. This isn't the first time that Fedora Workstation has pursued swap-on-ZRAM but they hope Fedora 33 will be the charm where it happens. Currently developers are debating on which implementation path to pursue.

The leading contender right now is making use of zram-generator, which is easy to configure and is only active if a configuration file is present, making it easy for various Fedora spins to opt-out.

Zram-generator is a systemd project for generating the relevant systemd unit files for zram devices.

The new discussion regarding Fedora 33 planning around ZRAM-based swapping by default via this mailing list thread.