> I often end up having to hold down the power button for 5 seconds.
If you enable the magic SysRq key, Alt+Print Screen+F will trigger the OOM killer.
Quick enable for those who want it:
kernel.sysrq = 1
in /etc/sysctl.d/90-sysrq.conf.
> I blame most of it on Chromium and Firefox
I rarely have this problem with modern Firefox, but also block ads so maybe that makes the difference. Chrome is always bad, though.
This would, in some way, let me regain control. Most likely it will have killed the X11 server and dumped me to a text console login prompt. If not that, maybe a browser will be killed.
The end result is roughly as bad as just rebooting, so I might as well just reboot.
It typically kills the browser. Sure, it gets you the same result as rebooting if you only have a browser open, but it’s much faster =)
Not all heroes wear capes.