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Make Firefox crash instead of freezing Linux when out of memory

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  • Last reply by Paul

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Internet websites can be rather heavy these days (like mega.nz or reddit, especially with multiple tabs), and they often take all memory (I think this is about RAM, of which my Macbook Air has only 4 GB, while running Kubuntu 22.10). Firefox very often freezes because of this, and my Linux system gets frozen too, completely unresponsive, with reboot as the only solution...

The problem that I want to solve is not the freezing as such, because that is not Firefox' fault, but that of the websites vs my RAM.

But I have noticed that while Firefox freezes along with the system, Opera, for example, when stumbling into the same problem, simply crashes, and the operating system is not affected.

Is there some setting/tweak in Firefox that makes it keep trying to run when out of memory and thus freeze the system instead of just close, like Opera does?

Internet websites can be rather heavy these days (like mega.nz or reddit, especially with multiple tabs), and they often take all memory (I think this is about RAM, of which my Macbook Air has only 4 GB, while running Kubuntu 22.10). Firefox very often freezes because of this, and my Linux system gets frozen too, completely unresponsive, with reboot as the only solution... The problem that I want to solve is not the freezing as such, because that is not Firefox' fault, but that of the websites vs my RAM. But I have noticed that while Firefox freezes along with the system, Opera, for example, when stumbling into the same problem, simply crashes, and the operating system is not affected. Is there some setting/tweak in Firefox that makes it keep trying to run when out of memory and thus freeze the system instead of just close, like Opera does?

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We're sorry to hear that Firefox is crashing. In order to assist you better, please follow the steps below to provide us crash IDs to help us learn more about your crash.

The crash report is several pages of data. We need the report numbers to see the whole report.

  1. Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A list of Submitted/Unsubmitted Crash Reports will appear, similar to the one shown below.
  2. Copy the 5 most recent Submitted Report IDs that start with bp- and then go back to your forum question and paste those IDs into the "Post a Reply" box.

Note: If a recent Report ID does not start with bp- click on it to submit the report.

(Please don't take a screenshot of your crashes, just copy and paste the IDs. The below image is just an example of what your Firefox screen should look like.)

Fx64Beta-aboutcrashes-unsubmitted

Thank you for your help!

More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.