> I've had the OOM-killer render the system unresponsive a couple of times Use earlyoom instead of relying on oom-killer. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

> I've had the OOM-killer render the system unresponsive a couple of times Use earlyoom instead of relying on oom-killer. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom To quote from the description: > The oom-killer generally has a bad reputation among Linux users. This may be part of the reason Linux invokes it only when it has absolutely no other choice. It will swap out the desktop environment, drop the whole page cache and empty every buffer before it will ultimately kill a process. At least that's what I think what it will do. I have yet to be patient enough to wait for it. [...] > This made people wonder if the oom-killer could be configured to step in earlier: superuser.com , unix.stackexchange.com. > As it turns out, no, it can't. At least using the in-kernel oom killer. And earlyoom exists to provide a better alternative to oom-killer in userspace that's much more aggressive about maintaining responsivity.