Re: [TCLUG:10969] GNOME configuration questions/musings

["John R. Sheets" <dusk@ravendusk.org>]

On Dec 15, 1999, Thomas Veldhouse <veldy@visi.com> wrote:
> Gnome as ALWAYS been unstable and/or buggy.  

For you, maybe.  I can't remember the last time a GNOME application
crashed on me (well, not including the ones I'm currently developing,
but that's to be expected...).  For example,

[jsheets@dante ~]$ ps aux | grep panel
jsheets  16794  0.0  0.5  7304  700 ?        S    Dec07   0:05 panel

The only reason it's only 8 days old is that I had to restart my X
Server to change some mouse settings.  Normally, I leave it running for
months.  I think a lot of instability can be caused by poorly-made
binary packages.  Also, if your library versions don't match up exactly
with the distributor's system, you could certainly expect crashes.  I've
always compiled my own versions of GNOME.  You may find that that's much
more stable, because the resulting binaries are tuned specifically to
your own system, not someone else's.

And don't forget, the GNOME project does not officially distribute a
single binary package.  Only CVS and source tarballs.  Any binary
packages are made by third parties.

> On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> 
> > >What version of Xfree and what video card is it? Its possible Xfree just
> > >isn't stable with your video card yet...
> >         I think it's X 3.3.5, whichever server is for a Matrox Mystique (I
> > think someone said it's just the SVGA server.)

Well, I'm running the SVGA server with a Matrox Millenium G200 card on X
3.3.5, with no problems (except for my mouse, which I've recently
fixed).  Nothing GNOME does should ever crash your X Server.  Only a bug
in the X Server (or a library mismatch) should cause that.  Don't be too
quick to blame GNOME.  Perhaps something that GNOME app is doing is
tickling a preexisting server bug...?

> >         got sick of GNOME at that point, and have been running in FVWM2 ever
> > since, without too much trouble.

Huh?  GNOME != WM.  GNOME is a set of applications.  It's hardly
mutually exclusive with FVWM2.  Many, many people run GNOME with FVWM2.
If you don't like the panel, don't run it.  But you can still use GNOME
without it.

John