To - Craigevil
Thanks so much for advice to use zram instead of swapfile. At first I thought to myself to leave well enoguh alone since I was getting results I liked. But, your suggestion had to be tried, so I did it. I rm'd swapfile and installed zram.
Here is my summary. The results were interesting, but definelty zram is on my machine to stay!
thanks again for the suggestion.
Results of Craigevil's zram suggestion:
1. Stress test # 1 using swapfile: added apps one at a time until cpu lockup, what I call failure
Clean boot, added in order: Taskmanager, Terminal, Firefox 3 tabs, Github web based, File Manger, LibreOffice and two files, Gimp with 345mb png, Krita with 2mb png, Inkscape with 10 mb pic, VS Code tried to load but locked up while loading. CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
2. Stress test #2 using swapfile: I changed order of APP loading: Clean boot, Taskmanager, Terminal, VS Code, LibreOffice, Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, another Krita pic tried to load but could not. CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
3. Stress test # 3 using zram and loading apps in same order as #1: same results. When loading VS Code after swap was already heavy, the VS Code screen froze, CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
4. Stress test # 4 using zram and loading apps in same order as #2: much better results. After loading "another Krita pic", I was able to add more apps: Inkscape with 2 pics, MyPaint with 2 pics, MT Paint with 2 pics, Thonny IDE, Firefox with 11 tabs open. At this point, my swap was nearly full but everything still worked! Ridiculously wonderful. But, I do not ever think I would utilize my machine with so many things open.
Conclusion: ZRAM for me makes my 4GB RPi5 with 512GB NVMe SSD optimus prime! BUT, the sequence of loading makes a BIG difference. My rule learned: If you are going to use a big memory hog like VS Code, reboot and then load it first, then the 2nd largest memory app and so on. This seems to work great. But, adding the VS Code after filling swap up somewhat fails.
stress test results: See Spreadsheet
Thanks so much for advice to use zram instead of swapfile. At first I thought to myself to leave well enoguh alone since I was getting results I liked. But, your suggestion had to be tried, so I did it. I rm'd swapfile and installed zram.
Here is my summary. The results were interesting, but definelty zram is on my machine to stay!
thanks again for the suggestion.
Results of Craigevil's zram suggestion:
1. Stress test # 1 using swapfile: added apps one at a time until cpu lockup, what I call failure
Clean boot, added in order: Taskmanager, Terminal, Firefox 3 tabs, Github web based, File Manger, LibreOffice and two files, Gimp with 345mb png, Krita with 2mb png, Inkscape with 10 mb pic, VS Code tried to load but locked up while loading. CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
2. Stress test #2 using swapfile: I changed order of APP loading: Clean boot, Taskmanager, Terminal, VS Code, LibreOffice, Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, another Krita pic tried to load but could not. CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
3. Stress test # 3 using zram and loading apps in same order as #1: same results. When loading VS Code after swap was already heavy, the VS Code screen froze, CPU LOCKUP, MAX LOAD.
4. Stress test # 4 using zram and loading apps in same order as #2: much better results. After loading "another Krita pic", I was able to add more apps: Inkscape with 2 pics, MyPaint with 2 pics, MT Paint with 2 pics, Thonny IDE, Firefox with 11 tabs open. At this point, my swap was nearly full but everything still worked! Ridiculously wonderful. But, I do not ever think I would utilize my machine with so many things open.
Conclusion: ZRAM for me makes my 4GB RPi5 with 512GB NVMe SSD optimus prime! BUT, the sequence of loading makes a BIG difference. My rule learned: If you are going to use a big memory hog like VS Code, reboot and then load it first, then the 2nd largest memory app and so on. This seems to work great. But, adding the VS Code after filling swap up somewhat fails.
stress test results: See Spreadsheet
Statistics: Posted by shore — Fri Jan 23, 2026 9:37 pm