Comment by pjmlp
9 hours ago
I mentioned they aren't the only UNIX where this isn't a problem.
Also we cannot use the reasoning Linux means distributions, instead of using GNU/Linux for it, and other times Linux is just the kernel, depending on convenience.
> I mentioned they aren't the only UNIX where this isn't a problem.
You did. But without examples, it’s a meaningless throwaway.
Personally, I can’t say I’ve pushed many other UNIX desktops that far that they’ve OOMed. Except maybe OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, neither of which faired much better. But they’d also suffer from the same kind of DE development issues I described for Linux.
> Also we cannot use the reasoning Linux means distributions, instead of using GNU/Linux for it, and other times Linux is just the kernel, depending on convenience.
I’m not saying it for convenience. I’m saying it because it matters in this specific situation.
Surely you must understand that the reason Windows and macOS have arguably better GUI support for OOM is because the same company that owns the kernel also writes the frontend too? It’s hardly rocket science as a concept.
As I said in my previous comment, there are ways Linux (the kernel) could work with DEs to bridge that gap. But at present, they’re entirely separate concerns.
Who says it needs to be desktop for proper memory management, servers and embedded can crash willy-nilly with OOM?
In any case, Xenix, DG/UX, SunOS/Solaris, Aix, HP-UX, z/OS UNIX, NeXTSTEP.
> Who says it needs to be desktop for proper memory management, servers and embedded can crash willy-nilly with OOM?
The context of the thread is about the UX.
And the OS crashing isn’t a better option than an OOM killer. Frankly, there’s no good automated options. That’s why modern desktop OSs present users with a warning. And hence why we are talking about GUIs.
> In any case, Xenix, DG/UX, SunOS/Solaris, Aix, HP-UX, z/OS UNIX, NeXTSTEP.
Listing OSs doesn’t explain how they handle things better.
For example you’ve cited SunOS and I already said previously, I’ve seen SunOS completely die on its arse when OOM.