ZRAM Finally Promoted Out Of Staging In Linux Kernel

ZRAM has finally been promoted out of staging and into the main area of the Linux kernel within the block subsystem.

Last month I wrote about zRAM was still hoping for a promotion -- after it being on the agenda for several months -- and today it finally happened. Committed to the linux-next Git repository is the commit that moves zRAM out of staging and into the block area.

As explained before, "zRAM has been around for a while now and formerly known as Compcache. The kernel module tries to increase system performance by avoiding paging to disk and instead using a compressed block device in RAM with around a 3:1 compression ratio. Besides Google relying upon zRAM in modern versions of ChromeOS and Android, Ubuntu has also looked at it and other Linux distributions. zRAM is very popular within the embedded space where RAM capacities are limited."

The change moving zRAM out of the Linux staging area in linext-next, so it should be in good shape for hitting Linux 3.14 within Linus Torvalds' tree, can be found via this Git commit.