computer freezing

[Christopher Browne]

On 3/18/07, jim ruxton <cinetron-uEvt2TsIf2EsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-03-18 at 09:20 -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> > On 3/18/07, jim ruxton <cinetron-uEvt2TsIf2EsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > Thanks Alex, I have a nvidia card so probably not this. I'm going to try
> > > KDE for a while as opposed to Gnome and see if that makes a difference.
> >
> > What is unfortunate is that that might well appear to "help," although
> > it would essentially involve masking the true problem.
> Yes but it will help me isolate whether I have a serious hardware
> problem and maybe tell me if gnome is somehow corrupted.

The thing is, we already can control for that.

GNOME lives purely as libraries and applications in user space.  It
has no way to access hardware in "evil ways."

The only way for it to "crash" your machine is if it is tickling some
bug in either:
a) Your X server
b) Your audio drivers

Aside from that, it *can't*.

And we know that very well because GNOME (and KDE for that matter)
absolutely need NOT to directly control hardware or system memory
because they are expected to run portably on multiple operating
systems.

If you seriously think that changing from GNOME to KDE will do
anything about this problem, then I suspect you're better off Googling
for specific problem reports by someone with your hardware combination
than anything else.  If you don't understand that these components
being user applications rules them out as possible causes, then the
best you can do on your own is a very trial and error-oriented
approach where you can't realistically expect to actually find the
problem.
-- 
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"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
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