----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sunday, February 2, 2003 4:42 pm Subject: (clug-talk) (RH8-Dell D. 2350) crashes
> I've been using Red Hat 8.0 on a Dell Dimension 2350 (2GH Celeron / > 512MB RAM) since early January. Bottom-line impression: I love Linux. > > But there's one problem I'd love to resolve. Linux has crashed while > surfing the Web, on average, at least every two hours (during at least > 50 hours total browsing). > > Konqueror seems more stable than Galeon and Opera, and all seem > somewhatmore stable than Mozilla. There's little consistency. > Mozilla, for > example, crashed on the third page I accessed today (Yahoo News); but > when I rebooted I surfed that page and many others for more than > an hour > without hanging. > > Meanwhile, I've worked more than 40 hours in OpenOffice Writer and can > only recall it hanging once. Evolution rarely hangs and the CD player > (kscd) hasn't crashed yet > > To compare OSes on the same machine, I've spent about 15 hours surfing > in Windows 2000 (using Opera, Internet Explorer and Phoenix) and had > only two crashes -- a much better average than Linux. In each OS, > control-alt-delete won't force a reboot after a crash. > > I usually work in KDE, but didn't document any improvement during > aboutfour hours in GNOME (on Mozilla, Opera, Galeon and Konqueror). > > Another quirk in Linux: the hard drive sometimes runs for three > minutesfor no reason. > > Also, Evolution is very slow (maybe 10 seconds) opening HTML e- > mails. Is > this normal, or possibly related to my Web-browsing problem? > > BACKGROUND: Inside the Dell box, there are NO CARDS. Everything -- > videocontroller, network controller, etc. -- is embedded in the > motherboard.(Luckily there were three empty slots.) The video > controller -- which > wouldn't work with Linux -- could NEITHER BE REMOVED NOR DISABLED. > > As a non-technical person, I was in over my head long before this > point.I'm much obliged to CLUG member Johnny Stork for coming up > with the > various workarounds that enabled me to use Linux my new computer. (I > just wish I'd talked to him before buying the Dell.) > > The workaround Johnny came up for the video controller was to set > up a > dual-monitor system and to designate the new video card (HIS TNT2 M64 > PCI) as primary and the built-in video controller as secondary. > (So the > original controller which couldn't be disabled is now outputting > to a > non-existent monitor.) > > Does anyone have any suggestions? Do I have any options beyond selling > the new $800 Dell at a discount to my brother-in-law (who prefers XP) > and starting from scratch on another new computer?? > > Any comments or anecdotes (e.g., your own experience with bundled, > brand-name systems, both positive and negative) will be much > appreciated. > > Thanks for reading. Sorry it's so long. > > Pat Hi Pat, I use a number of distributions on different hardware platforms and simply have zero and I do mean "ZERO" crashes, glitches nada, from Netcrap, Moz or Konqueror. I can only conclude that your PC has some serious hardware deficiency which is certainly not of your fault. I your brother inlaw wants it let him have it.He'll never know the diff anyway with XP anyway. Good luck.... All the best, Dan
