windows vs linux

[lvm]

I am using Seamonkey on 32-bit windows and linux. On windows when lots of tabs with heavy sites are opened Seamonkey eventually runs out of memory and its window goes black. As far as I can tell the issue is with rendering only, Seamonkey continues to react to hotkeys and blind clicks as expected. Sometimes making seamonkey's window smaller or closing some tabs restores the visibility but generally it is better to restart it. Note that it is not a system-wide memory shortage - problems usually start when seamonkey approaches ~1G with plenty of memory free, and closing other programs has no effect at all. Had this problem for quite a while with different windows and Seamonkey versions and on different hardware. On linux no such issue even with much higher memory usage - well over 2G. So, what's the difference and why can't windows version work as well as the linux one?

[therube]

> eventually runs out of memory and its window goes black. As far as I can tell the issue is with rendering only

Correct.
Though at some point you could probably expect an actual crash.

> Seamonkey continues to react to hotkeys and blind clicks as expected.
> Sometimes making seamonkey's window smaller or closing some tabs restores the visibility but generally it is better to restart it.

Correct.

> it is not a system-wide memory shortage - problems usually start when seamonkey approaches ~1G with plenty of memory free

It's more when SeaMonkey (Mozilla) is using lots of RAM.
Can vary, but generally > 2 GB of RAM (with a maximum limit of 4 GB for a 32-bit process).

> closing other programs has no effect at all

Correct.

> On linux no such issue

Suspect (SeaMonkey) Linux is 64-bit theoretically allowing greater RAM usage before such (or similar) issues ensue.

> why can't windows version work as well as the linux one

If/when SeaMonkey x64 for Windows is available, it may.
(Pretty sure there are some 3rd-party x64's out there.)

[lvm]

linux is also 32-bit, and yet I never saw such problem there even though I probably use it more than windows