> I've never understood why a process that is behaving could randomly
> get killed.

> Doesn't it make more sense to simply return ENOMEM to the process
> requesting memory, and let -it- deal with the problem?

Yes, but that's not always possible.  There isn't always a channel
avialable to return ENOMEM, and when there is, it isn't always easy to
take advantage of it.

The worst case is perhaps when you're out of RAM servicing a page
fault.  There simply is no way to tell a process "I'm sorry, you get
ENOMEM instead of that page your PC is pointing into".

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