tmpfs is similar to ramfs and RAM disk but with a few additional features. tmpfs is able to grow or shrink its space to accommodate files,and it can use swap space to store unneeded data. ramfs and RAM disk doesn't have this capability.
Use of tmpfs in Linux
Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and many other Linux distributions use tmpfs file system to store all their run time data.
For example, in Ubuntu, if I execute the following command, I find that /run is mounted on a tmpfs file system.
$ df -h | grep tmpfs tmpfs 401M 880K 400M 1% /run
The /run directory and its sub-directories store run time data of Linux processes and any running applications that may want to store their data.
You can check the actual [RAM + Swap] use of a tmpfs using df and du commands
Since tmpfs lives completely in the page cache and on swap, all tmpfs pages currently in memory will show up as cached.
tmpfs in some form or other is currently implemented in Sun/Solaris, Linux, and BSDs.
References
tmpfs @ Wikipedia.org
tmpfs @ kernel.org
