[fc_barnes]

Is there some relationship between Mach's poor performance and the ability of macOS to remain functional in low-memory situations? Linux has been called out recently for becoming unusable when free memory is low. Using both, I can say that the Mac is hands-down a better OS for desktop use where having the system not freeze is way more important than a 70% slowdown in file transfer rate.

Why is the Mac so much better under low memory conditions than Linux? Is it the kernel, and if so, is there an inherent trade-off between low memory performance and other kinds of performance?

If there is a trade-off, would reworking the Linux kernel to function better under low memory conditions also create a way forward for a non-dbus, non-systemd, yet modern Linux?

[curt15]

I seem to recall that back when I used Windows back in XP era when memory was limited, the page file would sometimes grow to a few hundred MB without GUI responsiveness suffering too much. Does Windows or Mac protect certain processes from being swapped?