An Electron app would mark its entire 2GB as required for interactivity. If you run 4 electron apps on an 8GB system you run out of memory.
Or Alt+[SysRq,h] for help
In 30 years of using desktop Linux I've never been able to interrupt a swapstorm. The only way out is long-press the power button.
On your system it probably doesn't work at all, not even when idle. It can only be 3 reasons:
- Your kernel doesn't have it. You probably have a generic kernel provided by the package manager without this feature enabled. I can't really help you here. I always build my own kernel from source (+ patches).
- Something hijacks your keyboard input. If you have a console already opened and logged in as root, you can "echo f > /proc/sysrq-trigger". Else, you can try setting up a permanent serial console and send the command from another computer. CTRL+2 then the command letter (f). The magic sysrq key over serial console is a separate kernel option that needs to be enabled.
- You're doing it wrong. On laptop keyboards, keyboards less than 104/105 keys, sysrq is one of the first keys to be removed. Getting it pressed with Fn combinations... Good luck with that!That'd require some new capabilities added, and some substantial shifts in how distro maintainers & users operate, so it's extremely unlikely. It's much closer to how things like Android operate, though still not quite as secure as giving each application its own user & dedicated storage for data.