I've written before about Linux's overcommit settings and the general background of virtual memorylimits . Several years of experience ofrunning various general use systems with strict overcommit and payingattention to the numbers have convinced me of something: non-strictovercommit is the right default on Linux , and probably on any modernUnix in general.

I have come to this view through experimental evidence, namely thatall of our user login machines generally run with significant amountsof committed address space, yet they have lots of free memory