Always, really? Perhaps I'm lucky but this happens quite frequently with my system (dev workstation, so browser with lots of tabs, IDE, my own app/server stuff,

Always, really? Perhaps I'm lucky but this happens quite frequently with my system (dev workstation, so browser with lots of tabs, IDE, my own app/server stuff, other "power/mem-hungry" dev tools...), and I always manage to keep it sane/healthy: - notice system starts swapping (if you do not monitor that, to me it sounds as careless as driving on the highway on 2nd gear and ignoring engine noise -- ideally the OS could proactively help here but unfortunately I don't know a good "automated" tool) - find out which process/app uses the most memory (Linux can even tell you which ones use the most swap space [1]) - decide which one you want to (gently|forcefully)-(quit|restart|whatever). Exercise judgment. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/479953/how-to-find-out-which-processes-are-swapping-in-linux http://stackoverflow.com/questions/479953/how-to-find-out-wh...