You seem to already know this, switching VLC to using ALSA solves the problem (tried it to at least 2 different ubuntu installations). No killing/restarting or removing pulseaudio required. Just open vlc -> Tools -> Preferences -> Audio and set Output module to ALSA.
FYI, regarding the kernel, I think the OOM killer works. I never had to reboot my system when vlc was having the memory leak. Yes, the whole system became unresponsive, then it takes a long while, but finally vlc gets killed and the system slowly becomes responsive again. (I struggled and managed to open an ssh connection and get some top output).
You seem to already know this, switching VLC to using ALSA solves the problem (tried it to at least 2 different ubuntu installations). No killing/restarting or removing pulseaudio required. Just open vlc -> Tools -> Preferences -> Audio and set Output module to ALSA.
FYI, regarding the kernel, I think the OOM killer works. I never had to reboot my system when vlc was having the memory leak. Yes, the whole system became unresponsive, then it takes a long while, but finally vlc gets killed and the system slowly becomes responsive again. (I struggled and managed to open an ssh connection and get some top output).