Re: [gnome-core-1.0.39-10] Daily Crashes

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 11:58:56AM -0700 or thereabouts, Craig Orsinger wrote:
> On 31-Aug-00 Russell Keith-Magee wrote:
> >> Anyhow, I'm running RHL 6.1 and GNOME crashes daily, is this normal? Is
> >> it my install? My install isn't one of my fondest, RHL defaults to
> >> eating all of my 32MB RAM when it boots, save ~800KB, and consequently
> >> my system caches a lot and is slow. =( But, that's not here nor there.
> 
>         Unless you're using an 8-bit Xserver, this may not
> be enough RAM. With a 24-bit Xserver, the minimum I feel 
> comfortable with is 64MB of RAM. This situation isn't going
> to get better when you upgrade to the newest GNOME.

I'm wondering whether "GNOME crashes daily" is "The whole of GNOME"
or particular apps. I've managed to run out of memory so badly that
I get a series of crash dialogues one after the other and I watch in
entertainment as GNOME slowly falls apart. But I've also met the
"everything works fine except for the one app I actually want to 
_use_" phenomenon. I'm not sure which is worse.

I frequently run GNOME on a Cyrix Media GX with 32 megs. It works.
But you have to make some adjustments to stop the cascade of crashing
apps. 

The default window manager for RH 6.1 is enlightenment, I think?
You need to switch all the funky cool features (rippling window
bottoms, for example. Hmm...) right off. You might want to try
different window managers. The currently trendy one is sawfish,
and that or window maker are both much faster than E on my Cyris.

When picking gtk themes, don't use pixmap themes. There is unfortunately
no easy way to tell whether a theme is pixmap or engine from just
looking at the control centre. But the pixmap ones use a lot more
memory. Light themes include: gtkstep, metal, notid, redmond95, 
thinice, clean and zenophelia, I think. Similarly, when picking
window manager-related themes, experiment to find the lightest ones.
(gtk themes control stuff in menus and the 'grey space' in many apps,
(well, it's grey until you start messing with it!); window manager
themes control the borders, titlebars and icons on windows. Some
also put big pictures on the desktop (aka root window, aka "the
background".)  Sorting out which does what can be a pest :)) 

Don't use transparent or pixmap backgrounds in gnome-terminal.
Turn off panel animations. Turn off menu icons. Remove applets
you don't use from the panel. Remove programs which start up
automatically and you don't use them from the list in "Startup
Programs" (or something) in the control-centre. (If they have
the property "spawn" or something like that, make them "normal"
and then remove them.) 

Other hints gratefully received. There is one to do with messing
with imlib options, but I can never remember the details of that.

Dingus-clicking doesn't work in GNOME 1.0.40. But when you upgrade,
you can invoke a browser by clicking on URLs that get highlighted
when you move the mouse over them. The default browser is Netscape.
That's painful on my slow machine. I removed Netscape and altered
the invoked program to something different and lighter.

> > gnome-core-1.0.39-10 is a VERY old version - the current version is
> > 1.2.1-0_helix_4. Gnome has made a lot of very substantial advances since
> > 1.0.39, not the least of which is a huge increase in stability.

There are also gnome-1.2 rpms for RH 6.2 on 
	ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/GNOME-1.2/
They do not cover all the extras that Helix provides, and have some of
Helix's fancier features omitted because they were built from the 
original tarballs. They are not heavily tested, but they appeared to
work here. Download 'em all into a directory and then cd into it,
"su" and then "rpm -Fvh *.rpm". They don't have the _helix_ bit in
the rpm name, of course :) 

>         Helix GNOME might be just the thing. They have a script
> that downloads and installs GNOME for you, so unless you want

...or there's Helix, of course. With the pretty pictures and less
rpm command-typing. 

>         In addition to gnome-core, you should also upgrade
> gnome-libs, ORBit, control-center, Midnight Commander, and 
> whatever window manager  you're using (probably Enlightenment). 
> There are probably some other packages you'll need to upgrade, 

There are, but I can't recall the complete list either :)

Telsa