Re: Can I use GNOME without cutting myself on the bleeding edge?

[Michael ROGERS <M Rogers cs ucl ac uk>]

>Is it possible to have a stable GNOME installation? I want to try GNOME
>against but have been hesitant to do so. Last time, I stopped using
>GNOME because I could take GNOME and X down by dragging a window from
>one quarter of the virtual desktop to another. I thought that was, um,
>not good. (Already reported the bug.) I'd like to try GNOME again if
>it's at least gotten to the point where it will only crash if I do
>something decently obscure.

I'm sure someone else will point this out, but if X crashes (rather than just 
exiting unexpectedly), the bug is in the X server or the kernel. No X client 
(including Gnome) can cause a working X server to crash.

>Are there things I can do to help the stability of my installation
>(aside from bug reports and prayer :])?

Use only one type of package (RPMs or tarballs), from only one source, so
that you don't get problems with different packages expecting different
versions of glibc. I think this is the only thing that has caused weird
crashes in Gnome for some time, so if you bear that in mind you should find
that Gnome is very stable.


Michael Rogers