First of all: I agree with the original bug report, relying on % of total system memory is likely to over- or under-estimate the actual memory situation. A short-term solution would be to select a fixed threshold in accordance with the OOM setup configured on our kernels, thus avoiding the issues presented in #2. Mid-term, I would propose two adjustments:
(1.) The system should let applications know if a low-on-memory situation is encountered, enabling the app to free up memory *before* the kernel OOM handler kicks in. (2.) For the browser specifically: We should fine-tune how memory is freed up/tabs are torn down. "Least recently used" is an obvious choice, but we should also factor in if a tab is playing audio/video or actively accessing the camera/microphone and adjust likelihood of being killed accordingly. (1.) and (2.) together should solve the issue in a way that handles memory pressure situations as gracefully as possible. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to webbrowser-app in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1576639 Title: memory threshold is too high Status in Canonical Device Images: New Status in Canonical System Image: Confirmed Status in webbrowser-app package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: When opening new tabs in the browser, it decides if it should close existing ones based on level of free memory available in the system. My understanding is that this is currenly set to 30% percentage of memory in the device. There are two issues with this approach and setting: 1) a percentage means that the threshold changes from device to device. While theamount of memory needed to open a webpage is not device specific. For example at 30%, the browser would close open tabs if there less than 1.2Gb mem free in a 4Gb device, but will only need 300Mb free on a 1Gb device. This is a very large difference. 2) In M10 with 2Gb it requires 600mb free. From idle, just opening the gmail in the browser, takes the avilable system memory below this. This means that in 2gb devices the threshold is never met, and the browser never runs more than one tab at the same time. this impacts user experience, specially in desktop mode. For example is not possible to open a document in the browser while attending a hangout. How to reproduce open a tab in the browser, go to youtube and play any video then open a new tab expected: music/sound in the video continues to play actual in m10: sound stops playing shortly after opening the tab To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/canonical-device-images/+bug/1576639/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
