why certain apps can freeze the entire OS? If processes alternate each other by scheduler, then why computer freezes? Why it happens? How can a program/app have this “power” to do it? What are the most common reasons? Is there a way to unfreeze it? If I wait a lot, will it eventually unfreeze?

Question

You can answer in technical ways (even though the sub says the opposite) if you want. I should understand it.

In: 3

Answer 1

The OS generally will give processes the resources they ask for. That’s what the resources are for after all. So if a process wants 10GB of ram it’ll get it if its needed. Same with CPU time, if a process uses a lot of CPU, the OS will let it. Now of course if it uses memory to the point that the system just can’t run, the process will get killed. And at least the Linux scheduler will dynamically decrease the priority of processor-intensive tasks to preserve responsiveness. But in general your computer resources are there to be used and the OS isn’t going to stop you from using them.