It might be useful to use zram in Tails.

• Rationale
• Roadmap
• Resources
  • Tools
  • Documentation

Rationale

zram is a kernel module that makes it possible to use some amount of RAM as compressed swap. This should allow using a bit more RAM than what's really available.

Roadmap

See tails#5740.

Resources

Tools

• systemd unit files
• zram-config in Ubuntu: Upstart job to enable zram support

Documentation

• Fedora 33 System-Wide Change proposal: swap on zram uses https://github.com/systemd/zram-generator (third-party Debian packaging)
• zram-tools enables zram on boot
• Gentoo wiki page about zram
• Google is Enabling zRAM for Chrome OS By Default
• Linux 3.8 ships a faster lzo compression module, that's used by zram (commit).
• Ubuntu's Live systems have enabled compcache (zram's ancestor) in an initramfs script shipped by casper on systems with no more than 512MB of RAM between Intrepid and Precise. Disabled in Quantal since compcache does not exist anymore.
• Daniel Baumann's initial testing report was quite sad: "i've tested it quite a bit with the idea of enabling it automatically on debian-live systems if the machine as not a certain amount of physical ram available. had only bad experiences with it, so far (worse than without it)". He experienced "complete lockups/panics, and general 'so slow nearly death' experience of the system" on 1GB systems with no disk swap enabled. He was giving sometimes half, sometimes 3/4 of the system RAM to zram (5162E7AB.3050302@progress-technologies.net).