How to Add zRAM on Ubuntu 26.04

---

zRAM is a compressed block device in RAM, used for swap or cache, which can improve performance on systems with limited RAM.

Enable zRAM on Ubuntu 26.04
Ubuntu includes support for zRAM via the systemd-zram-generator.

Install the zram-generator package

---

apt update
apt install systemd-zram-generator -y

Output:

root@vps:~# apt update
apt install systemd-zram-generator
Hit:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble InRelease
...
Installing: systemd-zram-generator

Create configuration file

---

Create a config file at /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf

nano /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf

Paste this:

[zram0]
zram-size = ram * 0.5
compression-algorithm = zstd

This sets zRAM to 50% of your total RAM.

You can also use:

compression-algorithm = lz4

for faster compression.

Reload and start zRAM

---

systemctl daemon-reexec
systemctl start systemd-zram-setup@zram0.service

Check if it's active:

swapon --show

You should see /dev/zram0 as an active swap device.

Output:

root@vps:~# swapon --show
NAME       TYPE      SIZE USED PRIO
/dev/vda2  partition 512M   0B   -2
/dev/zram0 partition 1.7G   0B  100