If it’s unacceptable to lock up, then turn off virtual memory. Swap is not a security hole, it’s a feature doing exactly what it was designed for. Swap is the explicit design tradeoff of the system you bought, and it’s the default behavior because most people prefer that their system work slowly to a system that stops working. Fortunately it’s an optional feature, and you can turn it off.
> I open lots of tabs, in lots of browser windows, on lots of virtual desktops, but so what if I do?
Hehe, the expected outcome of this behavior on an 8 GiB machine with default settings is a slow computer. You can blame the browser and spend your time frustrated if you want to, or you can choose to avoid asking the computer to use 20 GiB and then complain when it swaps, by requesting less memory and/or disabling virtual memory. It’s not that fair to go on and on about some vague abstract idea of malicious web sites and blaming the browser for not protecting you, if you are choosing to open lots of windows, browsers, desktops, tabs, and web sites.
> It’s the browser’s job to provide protection here.
If you study the browser design, and if you compare today’s browsers to those of 5 or 10 years ago, you will find that all the browser devs are actually bending over backwards trying to help you. They’re not perfect, but all of today’s browsers are pretty amazing in how well they handle low resources - but - the browser is just an application that does what it’s asked to do. If you use a web app that consumes 1GiB, the browser tries to accommodate your request. How is it supposed to know you want it to cut off the app instead of do what you asked? What if the app asks for more memory in the middle of what you’re doing, do you want it to lose your work??
The OS is the software locking up your computer, not the browser. Everything you’re talking about can and does happen with regular applications. Even if you got your wish of a browser that protected you from yourself, it wouldn’t solve the problem that landing in swap locks up the machine.
> There is no possible computer upgrade that will fix the issue.
I disagree completely. I never have the problem you’re talking about, and I use dozens and dozens of tabs all day long every day with multiple browsers. $100 in RAM right now could double or triple your capacity, if you don’t want to disable virtual memory nor change your browsing habits.
Yeah there is no solution to fixing the theoretical problem that some software somewhere can ask for more resources than you have. That’s not the issue you brought up though. In practice, the issues you’ve raised about browsing are quite easily fixable.