Killing processes when memory runs out usually isn't a big deal, and it's better than a hang or crash. However, try running parted with 32MB of RAM from a boot disk some time and you'll learn real quick how to restore from backup. I did that and since the boot floppy uses a RAM disk and there was no swap, I ran out of memory in the middle of resizing a partition. Well, guess what happens when parted gets killed in the middle of something like resizing a partition? I had scrambled eggs for a filesystem and it didn't just effect that partition. It somehow effected my Slackware partition as well requiring me to restore two partitions from backups. So, if you have less than 128MB of memory and plan on doing anything disk intensive, better find a free partition for swap space or disaster could strike.
