{"id":209855,"date":"2026-02-03T21:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/03\/how-i-speed-up-my-linux-system-for-free-while-ram-prices-are-out-of-control\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T05:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T10:50:09","slug":"how-i-speed-up-my-linux-system-for-free-while-ram-prices-are-out-of-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/03\/how-i-speed-up-my-linux-system-for-free-while-ram-prices-are-out-of-control\/","title":{"rendered":"How I speed up my Linux system for free while RAM prices are out of control"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/ram-prices-linux-zram\/\">How I speed up my Linux system for free while RAM prices are out of control<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/ram-prices-linux-zram\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/ram-prices-linux-zram\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-03 21:02:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Andriy Onufriyenko\/Moment via Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET:\u00a0<span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span>\u00a0on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>With the price of RAM skyrocketing, try this to speed up Linux.<\/li>\n<li>This configuration is simple to do.<\/li>\n<li>Some distributions include ZRAM by default.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The last time I checked the price of memory (RAM), I was shocked. According to Tom&#8217;s Hardware, the price of RAM has increased 240% on Amazon. Wow.<\/p>\n<p>There are two primary reasons why the price of RAM has jumped:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Supply chain bottlenecks and geopolitical instability<\/li>\n<li>Explosive demand from AI and data centers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As AI continues to grow in popularity, the price of RAM will most likely keep rising (or remain flat at higher prices).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: I struggled with Hyprland for months, until this Arch-based distro fixed it<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If those out-of-control price increases prevent you from upgrading your Linux system(s) by adding RAM, what can you do?<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, there&#8217;s a software solution you can use to eke out more speed from your Linux computers.<\/p>\n<p>That solution is called ZRAM. Let me show you how to install and use it.<\/p>\n<h2>What is ZRAM?<\/h2>\n<p>ZRAM is a compressed swap space that is used entirely in RAM. When your system is low on memory, it typically uses a traditional swap space, which is slower than a RAM-based space. Because ZRAM keeps swapped data in memory, it&#8217;s much faster than a standard swap-system.<\/p>\n<h2>Installing ZRAM<\/h2>\n<p><strong>What you&#8217;ll need: <\/strong>The only things you&#8217;ll need for this are a running instance of Linux and a user with sudo preferences. Keep in mind that ZRAM is typically enabled by default on Fedora and Fedora-based distributions. I&#8217;ve also found that some Debian-based distributions (such as Pop!_OS) ship with ZRAM preinstalled as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0The best Linux laptops you can buy: Expert tested<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll demonstrate how this is done on a Debian-based distribution.<\/p>\n<p>Next, we can install ZRAM with the following command:<\/p>\n<p>        Show more<\/p>\n<p>sudo apt-get install zram-tools -y<\/p>\n<p>ZRAM is now installed and ready to be configured.<\/p>\n<h2>Configuring ZRAM<\/h2>\n<p>With ZRAM&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/ram-prices-linux-zram\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How I speed up my Linux system for free while RAM prices are out of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/125606c6d15cfd7368e57cf8a5dcb3e0535e21bd\/2026\/02\/02\/701081b9-2593-49e2-b25b-d704c43e86d2\/gettyimages-1873278958.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[91,97,71],"class_list":["post-209855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-debian","tag-fedora","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209857,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209855\/revisions\/209857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}