this is the first time in many years of my GNU/Linux journey that I saw a BSOD. on my office machine BTW. personal machine has never crashed even once.
the crash was due to 100% RAM and swap usage.

image description:
a mobile-clicked photo of a laptop screen. the background is full black with a sad computer image in the middle. the text below it reads: “Oh no! something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can’t recover. Please log out and try again.”
just below it is a small button with the text “log out”

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    2·
    10 months ago

    100% RAM is a huge pain on Linux. I have a widget in my taskbar that always shows my RAM usage so I can tell if I’m about to get doinked

    • exu@feditown.comEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      There are automated memory killers that should avoid this. I’m using nohang, but systemd also has some module for this.

        • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
          1·
          10 months ago

          Technically you can create a fixed size pagefile in your disk and mount it as swap workout repartitioning. But Linux doesn’t use swap much regardless of method.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            It only uses swap under memory pressure. You can configure your swappyness if you want it to be more aggressive

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Up until yesterday I would’ve said “Firefox” (because I hoard tabs), but it turns the real answer was “Firefox running as a Snap.”

        (A failed update screwed up my Snap installation, which finally gave me the kick I needed to quit procrastinating and excise it from my system once and for all. I’m running Firefox installed via apt package from Mozilla’s PPA, and now – with the same number of tabs open – my system is hovering around 8 GB memory usage, when before it was constantly bouncing off the 32 GB redline.)

        • PainInTheAES@lemmy.world
          0·
          10 months ago

          Firefox somewhat regularly crashes or freezes up my laptop (16Gb) due to memory usage and I’m running the default Arch package. I ended up installing a memory watchdog that kills processes when they start using too much. Although I do hoard tabs.