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# Ubuntu Would Rather Kill Your Apps Before It Takes Down The Session
- URL: https://itsfoss.com/news/ubuntu-26-10-oom-policy/
- Published: 2026-09-21T10:04:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T10:04:56.000Z
- Description: Ubuntu 26.10 is shipping a change that should keep the desktop standing when your memory runs out.
- Author: Sourav Rudra
- Tags: News

Ubuntu 26.10 is changing what your machine kills when memory runs out. Applications [are meant to go first](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/improving-ubuntu-desktop-stability-under-memory-pressure/87945?ref=itsfoss.com), and the services that hold the session together now sit behind them. Thirty-nine of those services move to an OOM score of `-500`, with GNOME Shell and two D-Bus services among them.

That makes them a far less likely pick for the [kernel's OOM killer](https://linuxhandbook.com/oom-killer/?ref=itsfoss.com). Instead, something like a web browser holding the majority of the memory on your machine becomes the likelier candidate to be pruned.

Canonical has also switched off the *systemd-oomd check* that could take out your whole session on memory pressure alone. Though that change comes with a caveat where apps can still be terminated when memory runs out.

The policy has been implemented with [ubuntu-settings 26.10.1](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-settings/26.10.1?ref=itsfoss.com) and is already published to the [26.10](https://itsfoss.com/news/ubuntu-26-10-features/) archive.

## What does the kernel see?

Under pressure, the kernel draws up a list of every process. It scores each one on the memory it can account for, then adds a *user-space* number on top. That second number is the one Ubuntu gets to set for you. It runs **from -1000 up to 1000**, and staying at the bottom of that range means a process is kicked out of the running order.

An [earlier report](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/2089800?ref=itsfoss.com) cited by Canonical shows what that list looked like on an Ubuntu 24.10 desktop in 2024\. GNOME Shell sat at 100, so did Firefox, and so did every content process it spawned.

The system daemons already sat far lower. *dbus-daemon* and *systemd-oomd* were at -900, and *systemd-journald* at -250\. What caused the squeeze was a logic error in the reporter's own code, which set off a run of virtual machines and left the machine starved of memory.

It resulted in the killer picking one small app, [gnome-characters](https://apps.gnome.org/Characters/?ref=itsfoss.com), and killing it, leaving the virtual machines untouched.

## Scores were only half of it

The kernel is not the only thing on a desktop that kills. [systemd-oomd](https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man8/systemd-oomd.service.8.html?ref=itsfoss.com) watches memory pressure instead, and it acts earlier than the kernel does without ever looking at those scores.

Ubuntu ships it set to act on the user session at 50% pressure, so the -500 values could not have saved anything on their own. The [same ubuntu-settings patch](https://launchpadlibrarian.net/876111226/ubuntu-settings%5F26.04.6%5F26.10.1.diff.gz?ref=itsfoss.com) handles the oomd side as well.

ManagedOOMMemoryPressure is now set to `auto` on *user@.service*, over systemd-oomd's "*kill*" setting it had before. In Canonical's own testing, seven out of ten sessions died without the fix, and none died with it.

## Want to try it?

If you want to see the new behavior now, the change is already in the [development release](https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-base/stonking/daily/current/?ref=itsfoss.com). Canonical is asking people to put it to the test under workloads that eat memory on a machine short of RAM or swap.

If you face any unexpected behavior, like abrupt terminations or session crashes, then you can report those via [Launchpad](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-settings/+filebug?ref=itsfoss.com).