Canonical improving Ubuntu Linux Desktop stability under memory pressure

18 Sep 2026 at 8:10 am UTC
By Liam Squires-Hand

Canonical developers have been working to improve Ubuntu Linux Desktop performance, specifically when under memory pressure making it a bit smarter. Hopefully in future if you run out of memory, it won't just kill off things you're actually using - like the entire desktop environment (woops).

Writing in a post on the Discourse Forum, Canonical developer Jean Baptiste Lallement announced some changes for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release.

Some of the changes include:

• Critical desktop services now use a lower OOM score, making them less likely to be selected by the kernel OOM killer.
• Applications and background services keep a higher default score, so they remain more likely to be terminated first.
• The automatic systemd-oomd memory-pressure kill for the whole user session is disabled. systemd-oomd does not use the same OOM priority scores as the kernel. It could then terminate a critical desktop service based on memory pressure alone.

They're looking for testers and feedback to see how it goes, with more adjustments planned for future releases of Ubuntu.

It's not going to be perfected for this release - but it already sounds a lot smarter.

As for Ubuntu 26.10 it should release on October 15th going by the current release schedule.

🌐 External Sources: discourse.ubuntu.com, documentation.ubuntu.com Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Distro News, Misc, Open Source, Ubuntu, Upcoming 10 Likes Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:8BitDo announce 'Ultimate Software Online' to update controllers in your browser to help Linux gamersWARDOGS developers clarify Linux support via Proton may come laterDirect3D 8/9/10/11 to Vulkan translation layer DXVK 3.1 brings improvements for game launchers, older Frostbite engine and moreSteamOS 3.8.27 Beta and SteamOS 3.9.1 Preview released - Valve continue working on NVIDIA support All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.