While that is true, you can invoke the OOM killer at any time you want by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Print("SysRq")+F(uck?).
Given the letter they picked it seems like they're fully aware of the deficiency. As to why it was never really addressed, that's a good question. The recent le9[1] patch addresses the most annoying symptom of running out of memory by keeping some amount of RAM reserved for clean pages (like static program code) so that those won't get swapped in and out so much. That greatly improves responsiveness under low memory conditions.
Given the letter they picked it seems like they're fully aware of the deficiency. As to why it was never really addressed, that's a good question. The recent le9[1] patch addresses the most annoying symptom of running out of memory by keeping some amount of RAM reserved for clean pages (like static program code) so that those won't get swapped in and out so much. That greatly improves responsiveness under low memory conditions.
[1]: https://github.com/hakavlad/le9-patch