Thanks for the tip on EarlyOOM. Swap file is at least easier to handle than swap partition.

Some run their Linux without swap at all, however I think that is better for a server setup where you run a small set of specific set of binaries, thus you know your load.

That is not the case on a desktop where you running a variable set of binaries depending on your task.

I’m somewhat surprised how bad this works on Linux, I don’t think I ever experienced a swap problem on Windows (not even in the 9x days), I guess this is because "Year of the Linux desktop" never happened, Linux is primarily a server and embedded OS, not a desktop OS.