Comment 77 for bug 159356

Fedora 27, fully affected.

New to linux a couple of years ago, I decided to try 'live' versions on two Win 7 laptops (4GB Ram each).

Debian 8.6 first, then 8.7, 9.2 and 9.3. Ubuntu 14,15,16
Fedora 26, currently 27
DE's: Xfce, GNOME, Unity, Mate, Cinnamon, always the same problem.
(XFce hold up the longest; less memory intensive)

Manifested when multiple tabs are opened on the web browser (10,15,20,25, depending on the browser and version and how memory intensive it is):
FF52 up to 61 developers (the newer ones eat up memory faster)
Chrome, Chromium.

I banged my head against the wall for 1.5 years before I stumbled upon this thread, thinking it was bad memory (many days of running memtest), or other hardware (but in both laptops? Couldn't be).

The system will suddenly SEIZE up if you're close to memory capacity. If I am close, and I take my eyes off the USB drive for an instant and it begins to flash non-stop, once it goes beyond 10 seconds I likely cannot drop to the console I keep opened to kill the Firefox ps. Maybe it will respond after an hour, 2 or 4 hours, usually not. Time to power off.

Now I keep gnome-system-monitor opened and watch the memory approach 96% and restart the browser, and in the case of Debian/Ubuntu on X11, restart gnome-shell (which has a major leak problem also).

On one laptop I did make a separate partition for Deb 8.7 with a swap space. Same thing happens. I will observe the HD light come on and stay solid. That's the end.

I was shocked to find this bug and that it has existed for more than 10 years.

It makes this almost an nonviable platform and I'm loving Linux otherwise.

Sorry for the rant, there was 1.5 years of frustration built into it.

Thanks for all the work the dev's do, I know it aint easy.