[olpc-software] graceful handling of out-of-memory conditions

[Mike Hearn]

Unless the user is an extreme multi-tasker (unlikely in only 128mb of
memory) there would only ever be one application on that list - the one
they're running. Every other process would be an internal system detail
and not make sense to expose to the user.

I think the best that can be done here is both hardening programs that
are likely to run out (eg firefox) against malloc() == NULL and to warn
the user when they're running out of memory so they aren't entirely
surprised when things start crashing.

And as to the OOM killers behaviour - why does it not just kill whatever
is using the most memory at the time? I never understood that though
there must be a good reason.

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 11:23 +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> Jim wants to the window manager to decide policy on out-of-memory
> conditions.