Re: [orca-list] upgrading lucid to maverick

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Robert Cole <rkcole72984 gmail com> wrote:
> Unfortunately I upgraded my system via the update-manager-gtk front-end,
> so I am unsure as to what happens at the end of the do-release-upgrade
> command. I also do not have an answer as to why Orca returned garbled
> speech (as I am still a novice with Orca), but I wanted to offer this
> piece of advice I learned about how to "gently" reboot a Ubuntu system.
> I have done this due to system freezes in the past, and it seems to work
> wonderfully. 

What do you mean by system "freezing"? Is it a kernel panic, an X.org crash,
or something else? Do your log files show any error messages of interest when
this occurs? If you can still ping the machine over a network or long in via
ssh then this is an indication that the kernel and other basic parts of the
system are still operating normally, but the X server may have died - use the
ps command to find out.

As a Debian user, I've experienced one kernel crash in recent years, which
left messages displayed on the console screen. It was a relatively new kernel;
an upgrade arrived a few days later, after which the problem never recurred.
I've also encountered X server crashes due to what turned out to be a faulty
video card. Now that video drivers have moved into the kernel, video problems
can quickly become manifest as kernel issues. On the other hand, we'll at some
point be able to run the x server as a non-root user, and the video hardware
support is already much improved, so the advantages of the new design outweigh
the drawback.