Comment by weinzierl
17 hours ago
"How does it work on Windows[..]"
This video from Mark Russinovich is a classic explaining it. It is old but still relevant.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AjTl53I_qzY&ra=m
"My system should not get into an unrecoverable freezing state[..]"
There is a good precedent for what you want: Safety critical embedded systems. Your car ECU should not be in an unrecoverable freezing state when you want to break.
These embedded systems also are known to be terribly memory inefficient because every bit of memory is statically assigned and never reused.
So, it is not that what you want is impossible, it's just wasteful and expensive.
Linux and Windows sit on slightly different points on this spectrum (opposite of said embedded systems) and what you perceive as Windows' better behavior under memory pressure has a price too.
and killing programs and/or freezing the OS is somehow more efficient? By what metric? Certainly not by any UX or productivity one.
I've moved to Linux from Windows some years ago but the first thing that shocked me was precisely the abysmal performance around low memory availability.
Got my system stabilized eventually by means of some magical incantations but this wasn't a pleasant experience and I wouldn't want to repeat it.
It's beyond me how come Linux is so decrepid in this particular area compared to Windows.