How do you prevent an application from grinding the whole system to a halt?

[Eric Hanchrow]

>>>>> "Chanchao" == Chanchao  <custom at freenet.de> writes:

    Chanchao> Then had to rotate an image.  (2560 x something, 5MP
    Chanchao> camera shot).  While rotating though, The Gimp managed
    Chanchao> to bring everything down.  

If it was merely using tons of memory, and therefore slowing
everything down due to paging (you'd have heard your disk grinding
away if there were the case), then you might be able to prevent this
from happening in the future with judicious use of the "ulimit"
command -- it's built in to the shell.  "man bash" to read about it.

    Chanchao> Wouldn't the OS take care of such things all by itself
    Chanchao> in a perfect world?  

Of course.  As you've no doubt noticed, however, the world is not
perfect.
        
-- 
A free market interprets monopoly as damage and routes around it.
        -- Paul Graham