I often went into similar issues before upgrading my RAM. SysRq+F is your friend :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key https://en.m.wikipedia.org/

I often went into similar issues before upgrading my RAM. SysRq+F is your friend :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key That manually triggers OOM kill, making your system responsive again at the risk of killing something it shouldn't. At some point, I was probably using it five times a day. It got better when I started using swap (easier to recover when both full). I really recommend zram.