Full swap --> system nearly doesn't respond - avoid or warn?

[Bazon]

When swap is 100% full and RAM 95%, the system hardly responds.
(Although CPU usage is very low)

The mouse nearly doesn't move (only every more than 30s) and even switching to the console (CTRL + ALT + F1) takes severall minutes!

My System has 512MB RAM, and the Swap partition proposed by the Ubuntu installer was 305MB. (I had about 5GB free space when I installed Ubuntu)
[Now I enlarged it to 1,6GB, hangs doesn't happen anymore so I'm sure it's caused by the swap]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Make sure your swap is small enough (As I said I "tested" with 305MB)
2. Run some memory-eating applications (maybe image-editor or Firefox with lot's of open images. Shortcut:
This 88kB image makes Firefox use about 350MB: http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/3020/biggif0rs.gif
you can also save it on your desktop, when nautilus will eat lots of memory, too. But on the other hand it will waste also too much CPU...)
3. As soon as your swap is full you will notice the low responsivity.

What should have happened instead:

1. Easiest possibility: Display a warning when swap gets full. (user should close some applications or so)
2. Make sure swap is big enough by default (but what is big enough actually? depends on user...)
3. Avoid bad responsibility even when swap is full (however...)

As unbuntu has a focus on normal desktop users and includes Firefox which tends to use some memory sometimes this situation should really be avoided I think!

[Áron Sisak (asisak)]

Thanks for your report. Your idea might get more attention and have
the possibility of being implemented if you would submit a
specification for this.

You should first check whether it already exists at the Ubuntu specs
page (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+specs) in Launchpad. If
that is the case, feel free to contact the drafter of that spec about
your comments/suggestions. Otherwise you can start writing a spec
following the steps described in
        https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications.

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas)]

Przemysław Kulczycki, please don't change the status of the bugs in Baltix distribution until you aren't Baltix developer or an active user
(see http://launchpad.net/~baltix). At least don't mark bugs, assigned to Baltix by main Baltix GNU/Linux developer (Mantas Kriaučiūnas), as invalid. If you wanna become Baltix developer please write me a letter.