Apps crash under heavy swapping: inherent flaw or misconfigured Distribution: world

Hello!

At work I use a PC with 1GB of RAM under RH LINUX. Quite often I cause it to swap significantly: I run a large EDA app which takes 1.5GB, plus another Perl script running at nice 19 and taking (when it can) 200MB, plus another 200MB the "X" would like to get (usually only few tens MB resident), etc. Once in a while the EDA app crashes when after some idle time (swap out) I start running it again and heavy swapping starts (often freezing the KDE for tens of seconds!). In a phone call with the above app tech. support, when I told I'm running it under LINUX I was told that under heavy swap conditions crashes are more likely than, for example, under Solaris.

I would like to know if there is some basic flaw in LINUX kernel as opposed to Solaris with regard to swapping or it's just a matter of misconfiguration or wrong switches during kernel compilation? Not that I can change anything in that - the OS is provided by the IT department and I doubt they'll fiddle with kernel compilation, but just out of curiocity I would like to know the answer.

TIA, ****************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************** NOTE: before replying, leave only letters in my domain-name. Sorry, SPAM trap.