Killing activities when memory gets short

[Tiago Marques]

>
> > Just killing a random activity is a terrible idea becayse you don't want
> > your product behaving like it's defective; the pop up idea is way more
> > acceptable(and a lot better than having the system randomly behaving like
> > it's crashed). Either way, this is the extremely important use of swap
> > memory that doesn't exist here. I understand your engineering constraints
> on
> > the hardware but randomly killing activities is poised to confuse users
> and
> > cause people considering the hardware for deployment to think that you're
> > selling them something defective/baddly manufactured.
>
> I tihnk I have been sloppy with my words, so let me clarify two things:
>
>
I read through the thread but may also missed something.


> - killing processes should be done only to avoid OOM (because
> currently the kernel kills the wrong thing most of the time).
>

True.


>
> - before the need for killing arises, we can do a myriad of things to
> prepare the user for what is coming and maybe to avoid it (some good
> ideas have already been posted in this thread).
>

The idea of killing activities with the content closed seems ok but it would
probably be a good idea to have a way to opt out of it for some apps. I'm
thinking a PDF that may be left open on purpose to serve as reference to
something, a browser window, etc. Are you then proposing to use the LRU
policy to do the killing? I'm thinking that a popup with a cancel tied to a
timeout may be a good idea. Once it is not allowed to be killed, it should
not try to again for the session, or at least for a very large increase in
query time.
Apps like instant messaging(though I don't recall one for Sugar), would
definitely need a definitive opt out, no?

Best regards,
Tiago



>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > Best regards,
> > Tiago Marques
> >
> >>
> >> This, however, makes non-sugarized activities more dangerous to deal
> >> with. One more reason to demand proper sugarization.
> >>
> >> --
> >>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
> >>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Devel mailing list
> >> Devel at lists.laptop.org
> >> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> >
> >
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20100808/c0ec9019/attachment.html>