Ubuntu 16.04 with GNOME is my setup
I program in the language R using the R Studio IDE. The rsession program in my system monitor consumes ~200 MB of RAM at any given time. Every 30-60 minutes the rsession consumption exponentially increases until it's consuming ~7 GB in the system monitor. I only have 8 GB of RAM. At this point my entire Ubuntu session basically freezes, and I can only move the mouse around.
Why doesn't Linux catch this type of memory leak before it halts my whole system? The same thing happens when I use this program on Windows, but instead of a system freeze, I get an error, I CTRL+ALT+DEL, kill the program and then I restart the program where I left off and am immediately back in the game.
In Ubuntu everything is totally frozen and I have to hard reset. This kills my workflow for 5-10 minutes. If I continuously CTRL+F1 frantically for several straight minutes I can sometimes get to a terminal console, but that's an exercise in madness. How do I get Ubuntu to put the brakes on rogue processes before they freeze my entire GNOME session? I've filed a bug with R and R Studio but that doesn't help me until this issue is fixed (if ever). I'm fine with the program crashing, I'd simply like to kill, restart, and pickup where I left off.
ulimit