Comment 23 for bug 27441

Tim, I don't think the question is WHY the thrashing starts. I understand that trying to use more than the physical RAM installed on your system will generate paging.

The problem as I see it is that Linux seems to become unusable once thrashing starts. I will open a new bug about this, but I think it won't be very different from Ole's description: the point is that whenever a program allocates too much memory, any interaction with the system becomes impossible (mouse won't even move, terminal won't open, and I'm pretty sure, though I'll have to try this, that even remote connections might become problematic or impossible) and a reboot is necessary (unless the program decides to release or stop using the memory it allocated).