Re: That whole Netscape problem...

Ed Cogburn (ecogburn@greene.xtn.net)
Thu, 21 Jan 1999 12:52:40 -0500


doctor@fruitbat.org wrote:
>
> Ely Wilson said ...
> >
> > Netscape 4.x has been 'spontaneously shutting down' since as far as I can recall, on
> > both Debian and RedHat, under 2.0 and 2.1 kernels. This is nothing kernel related,
> > maybe indirectly if at all. This is a problem that should be taken up with Netscape
> > (or whoever it is that manages the browser source code) since this has been a long
> > standing problem among a great many users of all kernel versions.
> >
> > Maybe it uses a bad memory management scheme under Linux/Unix and it surfaces itself
> > under Linux/X Windows. This is a posibility, but I wouldn't stick my neck out so
> > far (on he lkml) and say it's kernel related, because tehre are MANY X apps that
> > don't spontaneously close themselves. If it were a less centralized problem...
> > well..
>
> I find it interesting that many people have this problem with Netscape.
> I've been running 4.51 for around 4 months (under 2.0.x) and never had it
> hang or die. With previous releases of Netscape there was some

First, where did you get the 4.51 version? I couldn't find it on
ftp.netscape.com for linux. 4.5 is the only binary available for
linux boxes.
Second, how do you use NS? 80% browsing, or 80%
email/newsgroups? Do you use multiple browser windows, or just
one? From other discussions on other mailing lists, its *how* you
use NS that has a lot to do with its stability.

> instability, but usually I just upgrade my libc and it settled down.
> When Netscape was developed (as with most products) a certain environment
> was used, ie: certain level of the kernel, libc, binutils, etc. Perhaps
> Netscape should published the exact environment the product was built and
> tested under as a way for people to figure out how their environment
> differs.
> Making a blanket statement that 'product XYZ will work with a 2.0
> kernel' will almost always be false on someones system. And usually it's
> environmental.
>
> --
> Peter A. Castro (doctor@fruitbat.org) or (pcastro@us.oracle.com)

-- 
Ed C.

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