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by cmurf 1714 days ago
The kernel OOM killer is only concerned about kernel survival. It isn't designed to care about user perception of system responsiveness.

That's what resource control via cgroups is about. Fedora desktop folks (both GNOME and KDE) are working on ensuring minimum resources are available for the desktop experience, via cgroups, which then applies CPU, memory, and IO isolation when needed to achieve that. Also, systemd-oomd is enabled by default. The resource control picture isn't completely in place yet, but things are much improved.
2 comments
jeffbee 1714 days ago
cgroups often make the situation worse, not better, by insisting that a small memcg drop caches because that control group is full while the system overall has plenty of resources. This can lead to a system severely swapping for no apparent reason.

Putting desktop apps into individual cgroups is one of the more counter-productive ideas that has cropped up lately.

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ladyanita22 1714 days ago
Okay, this is a good explanation of what's going on.
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