As a user with low RAM on my system (4GB) and a slow HDD (slow disk access means slow swap access), I believe Firefox waits way too long to unload its tabs. If only 5% of swap is free, it's too late. First, because the system has already chugged extremely badly from using any swap in the first place. Second, because at 5% swap left, there is no more room left to maneuver, swap is virtually entirely full at that point, and the system will be stuck for entire minutes waiting for it to get unstuck, juggling pages across extremely small amounts of free swap and free RAM. Which it may not successfully free itself from for hours if there is well and truly too much memory attempted to be used.
*I would love it if Firefox/Chromium unloaded tabs sooner, as that would be a much less drastic intervention than killing programs (or even using any swap in the first place, for HDD users!!).* I personally find minimal data loss from unloading tabs. And I am willing to risk that limited/contained amount of data loss, rather than a hard system power-off (or sysrq REISUB) that risks data loss of ALL open work across ALL programs. And furthermore: I'd much rather gamble that *one tab *gets unloaded in a relatively orderly way, and I lose some data, than *all of Firefox *completely and abruptly quits without a chance to internally save data. Or some arbitrary other program, opaquely and seemingly at random from a user's perspective. Side note: Julian Andres Klode on June 10: > If the user is bothered by memory usage and swapping death, then we > might already be in the point of no return territory and it's too > late to be able to kill stuff. > This seems true to me. Running low on both available memory *and* running low on swap simultaneously means you are already painted into a corner. It is a dire spot to be in, performance-wise, as it is hard to find a clean way out without the user manually closing a program, and hoping they can do so before they run out of swap and closing programs becomes so slow that they give up in favor of a hard power-cycle (or sysrq REISUB). Firefox waits a really long time, too long IMO, to unload any tabs. It is deferring the problem until it is already out of hand, IMO. *But *regarding *HDD vs SSD *difference in subjective experience of swap: Swap usage is a terrible experience on a slow HDD. Swap usage might be tolerable (might not even be noticed?) on a fast SSD. I am biased as a slow HDD user. Maybe waiting really long to unload is the better user experience on a fast SSD? Sorry if this is a ramble. Short summary: *If browsers would more-aggressively unload tabs, I think it would be the best move forward.*
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