AXIS hangs on long part- controls rendered inoperable while CNC still moving

On my VMC that I retrofit, Im running lcnc 2.8.0 (did so a few years back), using AXIS... ive had an intermittent problem of axis completely freezing while the machine continues to operate, but not able to use any keyboard input and having to estop and kill axis via taskmanager to restart the machine.
I would consider this hugely dangerous... anyone else have an issue like this?
Its been especially long programs where the toolpath display has had to remove previous run path highlights as it goes that have caused this issue.
Lcnc 2.8.0, mesa 7i76e, dell touchscreen, i5 something or other with 8gb ram. edit: running on linux mint 19.1
Stable for short parts very well, but running long programs has now got me a little scared.

Is this one of those times where an upgrade is warranted?