4 ms·
In that regard Linux is much worse than Windows. In Windows you basically never go out of memory in a way to lock the system, sice the OS reserves some memory f
by alerighi 6y ago
In that regard Linux is much worse than Windows. In Windows you basically never go out of memory in a way to lock the system, sice the OS reserves some memory for its functions. It will block applications, but the operating system remain responsive.
In Linux I was never been able to generate a similar behaviour. No matter how aggressive I set the swappiness, the system didn't began to swap until it was practically locked up with the mouse pointer lagging.
Windows reserves some memory for its functions, for example the UI (maybe the fact that the GUI is in the kernel helps), and thus doesn't have these kind of problem, especially with an SSD (and I know that page file on SSDs is not ideal... but had a disk for 5 years swapping on it and never had a problem).
- minitech 6y agoWhat do you mean “didn’t begin to swap”? It should always be using swap. It starts locking up when you run out of both swap and RAM (because it’s run out of things to swap out that aren’t critical to what’s currently running). What it fails to do in time is outright kill processes.
- barrkel 6y agoI have some strong memories of paging death on Windows XP, on spinning rust. I recall taking some minutes to recover: Ctrl-Alt-Del and wait for secure authentication screen; hit shortcut for Task Manager and wait for it to start and come to the foreground; navigate to offending process and kill it, with blind keystrokes. The mouse cursor did move smoothly throughout, though, as I recall.