The kernel OOM killer just isn't designed for desktop at all, it seems like. Back when I didn't have a ridiculous amount of RAM, I used this instead and was ha

The kernel OOM killer just isn't designed for desktop at all, it seems like. Back when I didn't have a ridiculous amount of RAM, I used this instead and was happy with it: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom The boot thing you mention always seemed a very odd default to me. It doesn't happen to me any more on my work ubuntu machine, but maybe I configured something to fix that and forgot about it.