Multitasking and system freeze

[rch@pub.osf.lt (Ricardas Cepas)]

			Hello,

	I often encounter the following problem: when system is 
heavily loaded, the speed drops unproportionally fast and system
gets frozen completely (for example, when I receive more mail).
Ctrl+Alt+Del stops working.
	Some test I performed on 486SX, 4MB RAM, 32MB swap, kernel 2.0.6,
						libc5 5.4.13-1 :
date
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do gzip -qc core >/dev/null & wait $!; done; date
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do gzip -qc core >/dev/null & done; wait $!; date
	gives:
Mon Dec 30 10:38:39 EET 1996
Mon Dec 30 10:39:03 EET 1996
Mon Dec 30 10:41:56 EET 1996
	After increasing the number of processes only `Reset' button
helps.
	Is there any solution ?

		Thanks,
-- 
                                        v      v
                                      Ricardas Cepas


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