[CLUE-Tech] (In)Stability of X?

[Mark Horning]

Sean LeBlanc wrote:

>I've read people's(usually pro-Microsoft folks) comments on Linux/BSD and
>they claim that, while the kernels are stable, X seizes up more than, say,
>W2K. These are usually in discussions about Linux's chance on the desktop.
>
>I've been using W2K on the job and a bit at home for nearly two years now.
>In my anecdotal experience, it seizes up more. Granted, I spend more hours
>on the computer at work than my computer at home, but at home, my primary
>desktop is FreeBSD 4.4/XFree86 4.1.0/KDE 2 (2.2?) and I have *yet* to have
>it seize up in X - in fact, I've checked my uptime and I've been up 24 days
>(I don't log out of X). 
>
>Anyway, I guess my question is - has anyone else seen X lock up in new(ish)
>versions? What apps/window manager were you running?  
>
>BTW - the latest little quirk I've noticed in the W2K machine I've
>"inherited" from the last guy - Photoshop 5.5 will, during certain
>operations, just reboot the machine!!! 
>
The only time I've experienced lockups that I can recall lately is when 
I had the
newsreader pan running while burning CD's (Gnometoaster), netscape 6.2.1
open, xmms playing, gkrellm going and a few Eterms here and there using
Gnome with Sawfish. This was with Mandrake 8.1 with the stock kernel
(2.4.8).  I think it had to do with the builtin USB and/or sound on the 
mother -
board sharing IRQ's with the two SCSI cards I have (SIIG AP-40 and an
Adaptec 2940U) the CD-RW is attached to the 2940 as the advansys driver for
the SIIG see's the CD-RW but won't initialize it at boot :-( Since I'm now
running the latest, greatest Mandrake beta (updating packages daily) and 
with
kernel 2.4.18 it has been rock solid. I'm also using the Nvidia drivers 
and my
SCSI disks are running software RAID0 (Yes, dangerous I know) with ext3fs.
As someone else mentioned, I've had very, very few lockups since going to
the post 2.0 kernels as well.

Mark

-- 

Mark Horning
rip6 at rip6.net