I have seen a small problem with compress.  uncompress *.Z fails to 
uncompress some of the files specified.  Failure prints some 
message like EINVAL or something (-; sorry, its been weeks)
But using uncompress afterwards on the individual file works.
I wouldn't mention it, but for the compress problems posted.

Certainly the easiest swap to disk to implement is the best,
but using fdisk can be traumatic.  Perhaps the way MS Windows
(shudder) does it would be acceptable.  ie.  use the file system
but set the swap size at the boot up time (a number in the kernel 
ala root device?) and allocate a single large file.  

Thus changing the swap size 
requires only a reboot - after modifying the kernel.