It's the explanation that I've read when scouring forums for reasons why it happens. I'd love to hear alternative explanations and how to measure/verify them. But the measurement tools also become unresponsive so I can't check anything.

But frankly, as a user I don't really care what the real technical reason is. I just don't think the system should become unresponsive for minutes on end during memory pressure. Just OOM-kill earlier, when it's supposed to.