#8121 NORM Not Tri: There is a point when launching new activities fills up mem, makes system crawl to a freeze, and only solution is to power down

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#8121: There is a point when launching new activities fills up mem, makes system
crawl to a freeze, and only solution is to power down
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 Reporter:  HoboPrimate  |         Owner:  marco        
     Type:  defect       |        Status:  new          
 Priority:  normal       |     Milestone:  Not Triaged  
Component:  sugar        |       Version:  not specified
 Keywords:               |   Next_action:  never set    
 Verified:  0            |     Blockedby:               
 Blocking:               |  
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 Joyride 2326

 As I use my XO (B4), many times when I launch a new activity, the system
 freezes to a crawl because I've reached the limits of memory. The only
 solution is usually to forcefully power it down with the power button,
 with the possibility of loosing the last changes done in activities, and
 being a nuissance as well.

 There should be a way to either:[[BR]]
     * Impede users of starting/resuming an activity, when free memory has
 reached some low threshold, telling this to the user
     * Just like the Journal icon shows the Nand space available, so could
 there be a device in the devices place on the frame, representing Memory,
 informing in its palette (and icon fill) how much free memory the system
 has.
     * Or a combination of both, such that when trying to launch a new
 activity and it doesn't, the "Memory device" warns that there isn't
 sufficient memory to do so.

 I've understood that it's tricky to truly gauge how much free memory and
 how much memory an activity will use (because of shared memory?), but
 something has to be done to avoid these "terminal" freezes.

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8121>
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