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

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:50:11PM -0700, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, 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'd really like to know where they're getting this. Sounds like
> classic FUD to me.

I think it can vary with hardware and applications. For instance, the
machine I am sitting at right now is a 5-or-6-year old IBM PC: Pentium
133, 128M of RAM, S3 Trio 64 video card. I have very rarely had X lock
up or even behave weirdly on this machine. Now, I'm running XFree86
3.3.6 -- I tried to install 4.1 a couple months ago, but found out it
didn't support my video card except in lo-res VGA mode ... not sure I
understand that ...

On the other hand, I have a Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop from work. It has
a neomagic chipset (I forget which model exactly -- who can keep track?)
and is running XF86 4.1. When in the office, I have typically used it
hooked up to an external LCD monitor. When I use it standalone, it 
occasionally locks up, but hooked up to the external monitor, it locks
up almost every day, sometimes several times a day. This especially 
happens when I use KDE apps (or should I say QT? dunno -- I don't really
use non-KDE QT apps), and Konqueror is certain death.

My usual window manager on both machines is Window Maker, though I some-
times run others -- and though I sometimes run KDE apps, I don't use
the full desktop.

However, I suspect this is really more of a hardware issue, because:

 * If I turn off the built-in monitor from the keyboard, after a while
   it comes back on by itself.
 * The problem becomes less severe (but doesn't vanish) if I set the
   BIOS to 'external monitor' (as opposed to auto-detect).
 * When I started getting fed up with it, I tried SSHing in from another
   machine and killing X. Killed XFree86, xinit, startx, anything I
   could think of having to do with X, and double-checked with 'ps aux'
   that they were dead. The image on the screen remained frozen, and
   the keyboard continued to be completely dead.

Could also have to do with APM support in the kernel. I haven't really
had time to try different configs.

Seems like certain GUI apps are dangerous: I mentioned KDE above; I
also recall that several years ago, when I first started using the
GIMP (version 0.99?), I had very frequent lockups: what would happen
was that when there was an exception, the GIMP would write a message
to the console, with a prompt for the user to make a choice ... and
block waiting for input, effectively locking the X session. It still
happens once in a while.

Then there's Netscape 4.x. No doubt everybody's got their own horror
story, so I won't go on at length. But sometimes I browse Japanese 
sites, using TrueType fonts for the Japanese characters. For the first
few pages, and sometimes later ones (I suppose until most of the 
characters are cached), Netscrape takes a LONG, LONG time (2-3 minutes
sometimes) to render a page, and everything else freezes until it's done.

So what does it all mean? I have no final answers, but I tend to think
there's a grain of truth to the criticism. No doubt they choose examples
that favor their point of view, but they're not completely out to lunch.

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/