nautilus doesn't start under heavy load
This problem was resolved by installing nemo as suggested by @Fabby in a comment here.
I installed with:
sudo apt-get install nemo
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libnemo-extension1 nemo-data nemo-fileroller
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libnemo-extension1 nemo nemo-data nemo-fileroller
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1,075 kB of archives.
After this operation, 6,116 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Further research indicates that I was affected by this bug. IF you are also affected please subscribe to the bug so that the developers can get a sense of it's impact and budget their time accordingly.