systemd-oomd
Out-of-memory daemon
Kills processes under memory pressure before a full out-of-memory event, keeping Linux responsive. Critics say it still does not solve the problem and can kill whole sessions.
Kills processes under memory pressure before a full out-of-memory event, keeping Linux responsive. Critics say it still does not solve the problem and can kill whole sessions.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 65%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Configurable per cgroup or task
“If using systemd-oomd, you can launch Firefox into it's own cgroup / systemd.scope, that has memory pressure control settings set to not kill it.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces” “It's quite handy for this especially since you can tell it to aim its OOM heavy artillery at only certain tasks”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps” “you can configure it to your liking and see if it improves your problem”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” Acts on memory pressure early
“Install and configure systemd-oomd and track its log - it will activate on memory pressure.”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “A 40ms Go garbage collector pause caused by swap” “It works by killing the offending process (hopefully) before a true OOM.”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM” “use user-space oomd to recover from this situation earlier”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “A 40ms Go garbage collector pause caused by swap” Works reasonably well by default
“systemd-oomd works reasonably well and there is source code”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “They usually work out of the box”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM” Fixes memory freezes for many users
“Combined with systemd-oomd I haven't had a swapping or memory issue in many years.”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12” “systemd-oomd (or similar) afaik is enabled in many modern releases and fixes it.”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Kills whole user sessions
“systemd-oomd killing your whole session because Fedora enrolled user@.service is nasty”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “Chris disables systemd-oomd after it obliterates his X session with no explanation”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “seems tuned for server workloads, I couldn't get it to stop killing my session”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces” - Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “HipKittens: Fast and furious AMD kernels”
Only a partial fix
“systemd-oomd helps a little bit (killing processes before direct reclaim makes everything seize up), but there's still no general solution”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces” “There's user space oom options, like oomd, earlyoom ... but I'm not sure any heuristic really knows what user space program to clobber.”
Comment from 4 Jul 2026 in “PostgreSQL and the OOM Killer: Why You Must Use Strict Memory Overcommit” “From my experience it does not help much”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11” Replaces a better, inferior design
“a system that did an OK job at dealing with low memory situations has been replaced with a completely inadequate system”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it” “such an inferior way to deal with memory limits”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| earlyoom | 23 | 4 | 85% | 10 | — | Approved |
| systemd-oomdThis page | 13 | 7 | 65% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's quite handy for this especially since you can tell it to aim its OOM heavy artillery at only certain tasks”
“Install and configure systemd-oomd and track its log - it will activate on memory pressure.”
“use user-space oomd to recover from this situation earlier”
“systemd-oomd works reasonably well and there is source code”
“glad systemd-oomd finally added solid rulesets in 261”
“systemd-oomd killing your whole session because Fedora enrolled user@.service is nasty”
“Chris disables systemd-oomd after it obliterates his X session with no explanation”
“you can configure it to your liking and see if it improves your problem”
“systemd-oomd (or similar) afaik is enabled in many modern releases and fixes it.”
“It works by killing the offending process (hopefully) before a true OOM.”
“They usually work out of the box”
“There's user space oom options, like oomd, earlyoom ... but I'm not sure any heuristic really knows what user space program to clobber.”
“Current zswap+oomd behavior is the best choice imho.”
“Combined with systemd-oomd I haven't had a swapping or memory issue in many years.”
“It did eventually work to but it took a while.”
“The earlyoom/oomd changes are quite recent..”
“From my experience it does not help much”
“seems tuned for server workloads, I couldn't get it to stop killing my session”
“systemd-oomd helps a little bit (killing processes before direct reclaim makes everything seize up), but there's still no general solution”
“If using systemd-oomd, you can launch Firefox into it's own cgroup / systemd.scope, that has memory pressure control settings set to not kill it.”
“kills only entire cgroups of processes at a time, rather than a single process offender”
“Leave systemd-oomd to manage cgroups and containers, but having it manage desktop apps and standard Unix process launching leads to bad code.”
“a system that did an OK job at dealing with low memory situations has been replaced with a completely inadequate system”
“such an inferior way to deal with memory limits”
“OOMD has killed my greetd session before”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.