how to Identify which process is causing computer to freeze?

Question

EDIT 2
While it didn't answer my original question, since increasing the swap to 4G I don't experience any more computer freezes, so I accepted the answer

EDIT

As @heyynema suggested, I ran the following operations

I'll report back in a few days whether this has solved/improved the issue

OP

I'm running multiple dev related processes on my machine in the background, i.e. vscode, dev servers, etc

every once in a while my laptop kinda freezes almost entirely for about 30 seconds, and then everything goes back to normal.

during the "freeze" if I move my mouse I can see the cursor moving around very slowly with a huge lag.

Is there a way to identify which process is causing this?

I don't know much about memory and monitoring, is there an alert I should set up, i.e. "if any process exceeds X memory then log Y"?

Keep system monitor open, and look at the process consuming the highest amount of memory. — Archisman Panigrahi, Aug 02 '21 at 05:14
Edit your question and show me free -h and sysctl vm.swappiness and swapon -s. Start comments to me with @heynnema or I'll miss them. — heynnema, Aug 02 '21 at 19:29
@ArchismanPanigrahi I can't do that because in these "freeze" times I can't switch to any window, everything is kinda not responding — goldylucks, Aug 07 '21 at 23:01
Sry had a hectic time at work. updated OP with the outputs of your suggestions. Will report back in a few days! (and of course accept the answer if things improve :) — goldylucks, Aug 11 '21 at 07:12

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 08 '21 at 00:11

You have plenty of RAM. But historically a 2G /swapfile has proven to be too small. We'll increase yours from 2G to 4G...

Note: Incorrect use of the rm and dd commands can cause data loss. Suggest copy/paste.

In the terminal...

sudo swapoff -a           # turn off swap
sudo rm -i /swapfile      # remove old /swapfile
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=4096
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile  # set proper file protections
sudo mkswap /swapfile     # init /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile     # turn on swap
free -h                   # confirm 16G RAM and 4G swap

Edit /etc/fstab, using sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab or sudo pico /etc/fstab.

Confirm this /swapfile line in /etc/fstab... and confirm no other “swap” lines... use SPACES in this line... confirm NO TABS...

/swapfile  none  swap  sw  0  0

reboot                    # reboot and verify operation

how to Identify which process is causing computer to freeze?

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