Sorry, I don't have the original message to reply to.. But to those interested, I have found a solution to the kernel's complete inability to allocate more memory when it needs to swap out.
Increase the /proc/sys/vm/watermark_scale_factor from the default 10 to 500 It will make a huge difference, especially with swap on SSD, the kernel will swap out gracefully to allocate more memory, and you can get a few GB more memory in use before really noticing performance problems.