Yeah, it’s quite amazing. I needed it for playing star citizen on Linux. It needs 48gb minimum on Linux and I had only 32gb. So I zram’ed 50% and was granted 50fps instead of 5.
But the higher the compression factor, the more perf. Penalty you’ll get. 2x is very very easy on the CPU.
You should read into zram, It’s a very fast compressing method that will help you leverage some ram space. With your 16gb ram you could compress 8gb with a normal 2x compression rate. That would “net” you around 20gb usable ram space. With basically non existing performance penalties. You can also opt to compress all of your 16gb.
In layman’s terms it’s like downloading more ram. But it won’t help you get rid of your source problem.
You can also make gnome look like windows or kde look like Mac OSX.
There really isn’t a limit to customization for Linux.
F.e. I use kde but have it look like/close to osx, because I prefer how kde manages multiple displays. I do like gnome, but I cannot stand it’s stubbornes (or maybe my stubbornes?) with multi screen setups.
There’s many ways and you can choose the one you like most, that’s the beauty of Linux :).