swap feels like cheating
Windows does have memory compression, though you can’t really change the algorithm or how aggressive it is. AFAIK it is just a toggle of on or off.
And the next question, can you make a RAM drive? Yes ImDisk. Even DOS had ramdrive.sys
Zram offers way more flexibility and versatility compared to ImDisk.
Zram can be used for swap space or as a general-purpose RAM disk. Unlike a traditional RAM drive, Zram can compress data using a nice hand full of algorithms, notably Zstd; allowing it to store more information within the same RAM capacity leading to faster I/O and efficient memory usage with minimal CPU usage; & LZO-RLE; offering the fastest compression and decompression speeds leading to faster data swapping between compressed and uncompressed states, potentially improving overall system performance. Also, ImDisk afaik only offers NTFS compression for RAM drives which is… well… pretty damn slow for this particular use comparatively.
Additionally, Zram persistence can be configured with writeback devices. ImDisk typically doesn’t offer persistence.
ramdrive.sys isn’t even worth talking about, it never had any kind of compression let alone anything else I mentioned previously.
That’s not that same. That’s closer to Zswap. “Enable-MMAgent -MemoryCompression” enables compressing inactive memory pages in RAM. Zram is 1 or more compressed block devices in RAM that can store a much larger variety of data.