How Can I Make the OOM Killer More Responsive on Linux?

It sounds like you're dealing with some serious application lag. Consider looking into using a swap file or partition, or even enabling ZRAM for better performance. Since you have an Intel i3, a lighter-weight distro might help too. While Xubuntu is decent, exploring options like AntiX or Bodhi could give you a smoother experience since they use fewer resources. Also, be aware that plenty of applications can be heavy on RAM, especially if they’re not fully optimized for Linux. Just some thoughts to help you out!

Your freezes suggest the system is trying to use swap before killing processes, which is common. The OOM killer kicks in only when the swap gets full. I recommend focusing on swap management instead of counting on the OOM killer. If you do want to work with the OOM killer, you could experiment with reducing the swap size or tweaking its usage parameters.

If your system is slowing down but not crashing, it's likely that applications are being shifted to swap memory, which can slow them down considerably. Tuning your swap settings might improve performance. You might want to adjust the size or how your system handles swap. Instead of relying on the OOM killer, it could be more effective to fine-tune how your system uses swap.