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I'm not sure is it is the best place to discuss this but...

Just recently I got a *power line: down* situation, and as anyone can guess, all unsaved data was lost.

So the idea:

At predefined time intervals copy ram content to hdd, so after unpleasant situation OS could easily restore your data and workflow. In similar way, like after hibernation.

Such feature could be positioned as one of the key features, that differs KDE from any other OS. User data is always kept safe, even in unsave media. Both home and business user will dive big plus for it.

Ever servers could use it. Lets say restarting mysql server after crash could take even up to a few hours trying to recover unsaved data.



Also there are a few Points, that can't be forgot, so

Problems and solutions:

:: Many PC's has a lot of ram and copying 4gigs could freeze workflow::

Filter apps to save. Not all precesses is important or keeps important data. Processes like Amarok, compiz/kwin, kmix, phonon does not store user data, firefox, opera restores themselves very well. They can be skipped by so reducing footprint a lot and a new instances can be started during recovery.


::HDD's will get a lot of stress::

Don't copy everything at once. Scheme, when looping though all processes and one process is backed up one a 1-2 mins will reduce instant stress on hdd, since less data will be written in a single step.

Make use of internal USB Most desk PC's has internal USB slots, so a small memory device can be put into a box, by so removing all stress from production HDD You can buy 4GB flash card or 2.5" USB EXTERNAL drive for less than 10EUR/USD

Good idea for some environments.
But I think you should do it per-application.
1. You often know which application loves crashes
2. Only very few applications need the feature
3. Don't forget this:
The data must be consistent. There aren't validators for RAM. You'll need to freeze the application. And that's still not 100% secure, because some applications use shared-memory.

Agreeing with the above comment.

Also, it's very difficult to save an application's state while it's running. Take programs that use your graphics card for example: you have to store not only the application data, but also the graphics card contents and so on. It gets even more complicated if the application has files open, is in the middle of some library code etc. This makes the process of saving one simgle application's state very difficult or even impossible.

BTW, this is Linux specific, and should therefore be handled by the Linux kernel. Go to their mailing lists and propose something like this, or look of projects that already exist and that can freeze programs for you - I've heard of a few. This is not a KDE issue so it shouldn't be handled by KDE.