desktop entry proposal: TerminateSafe=true key

[Colin Walters]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys at pld-linux.org> wrote:
>
> There is no such thing as "low memory". Ideally you should have 100%
> of the memory used at all times. For apps, their data, their buffers,
> disk buffers etc.

Of course.  But if the buffer cache gets too low, or applications
start hitting swap, that's when the system should start terminating
applications that are TerminateSafe=true and haven't been interacted
with recently.

> You know you're low on memory when your malloc fails. Failing a malloc
> of 500M is not the same as failing a malloc of 4K.

Apps are expected to use e.g. g_try_malloc for the former.

> Asking a userspace app to do anything when allocating 1 byte of memory
> is likely to fail is a more polite way of just harvesting it with the
> OOM killer. Also, with multiple users logged in, which app should we
> ask?

In this scheme apps aren't asked.  Obviously we should terminate the
least-recently-used apps from the user who has been inactive the
longest.