Recently I've been digging up information about processes in GNU/Linux and I met the infamous fork bomb :

```
:(){ : | :& }; :

```

Theoretically, it is supposed to duplicate itself infinitely until the system runs out of resources...

However, I've tried testing both on a *CLI Debian* and a *GUI Mint* distro, and it doesn't seem to impact much the system. Yes there are tons of processes that are created, and after a while I read in console messages like :

> 
> bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
> 
> 
> bash: fork: retry: No child processes
> 
> 
> 

But after some time, all the processes just get killed and everything goes back to normal. I've read that the **ulimit** set a maximum amount of process per user, but I can't seem to be able to raise it really far.

What are the system protections against a fork-bomb? Why doesn't it replicate itself until everything freezes or at least lags a lot? Is there a way to really crash a system with a fork bomb?