Stability & Graphics Bugs?

[PrimoTurbo]

Does anyone else find application stability for Linux in general worse then for Windows XP? I just had Listen completely freeze on me, and then I was using Mplayer the screen went blank while I resized a window, then I couldn’t see the video so I had to restart the app. Same thing with BMP, some how the main player disappeared and I could only see the play list which was unable to move, had to kill it and restart. I notice this quite frequently, like 5 or 6 times per a day an application will freeze or something else will happen. I was using XP for the last 2 days because I was playing a lot of CSS and I don’t recall a single crash or error, in fact the only thing I recall is sometimes firefox freezing but very rarely like once every 2 weeks and usually if I got to some odd site or something.

Also there are quite a bit of graphical errors in gnome, like if you change your panel size you have to do killall to gnome-panel, which in return kills most apps. They should seriously do something about it.

I wonder if you guys experience anything like this? I remember the days of Windows 9X when every 30 minutes you had something crash or you would at least see the blue screen once every 2 days, but this definitely doesn’t hold true for XP. Thoughts?

[rattlerviper]

Held true for xp for me! XP was not extremely stable after service pack 2 came out. Not had any of those problems with Ubuntu. Have you considered using a KDE or Xfce(Kubuntu or Xubuntu possibly) and seeing if they are more stable for you? Maybe you already have.

[PrimoTurbo]

Yes I have used both, I find kde has less graphical issues but there is still quite a bit of apps that freeze up.

[rattlerviper]

Yes I have used both, I find kde has less graphical issues but there is still quite a bit of apps that freeze up.

Odd, Gnome is rock solid on my pc.:confused: No clue what is going on.

[Polygon]

i have never had these kinds of problems...

maybe its a different problem.. like your ram is bad? (unlikely, but never hurts to check)

[beniwtv]

Same here. I never had problems with Gnome or ubuntu. It's rock stable on my PC.

[PrimoTurbo]

Nope it's not a hardware issue, my computer is fine. I have tested Ubuntu & Suse on various computer and have noticed similar things.

[nalmeth]

Never seen that kind of behavior that much. I've definetly never seen the gnome panel thing.. Actually, I think kubuntu has more graphical problems than gnome does.

What kind of video card are you running?

[Christmas]

I don't know if more unstable than XP apps, but indeed some apps crash and some KDE major bugs are very annoying (some apps fail to start, "kdeinit could not launch whatever_app). But they should be improved in time hopefully. I guess all the major apps will get better and better until (almost) perfection. Some of the apps I don't find stable would be:
Adept (i filled a bug report here (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/adept/+bug/55053)
Adept_Updater
KDEInit (I don't know what's with this bug, there is a bug report on launchpad here (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/kdebase/+bug/37280)
I guess this problems should be fixed, I mean even if there is a manually fix for them they are very annoying.
XChat - some crashes when a loaded C plugin compiled succesfully gives the "segmentation fault" error (i think, however XChat closes immediately instead of automatically unloading or notify the user that the plugin is not coded correctly).

I can't remember right now others. On the other hand, I find Amarok very stable, Firefox which is a great app (and here in direct comparison Fx blows IE).

As you mentioned XP, I still think (even if I don't use it anymore) that it is a good and stable system. And the apps... well Winamp is so damn stable! Never crashed on me in about 2 years. Beginning with version 5.01 or something like that. I hate Microsoft Windows apps included in XP as default, like Windows Media Player, IE and some more.

Bottom line, my answer is yes, some Ubuntu/Kubuntu apps are still buggy, but they are on a good path (I hope).

[prizrak]

If you got an nVidia card you should install the proprietary driver. I had some random issues on my system w/ the open source driver. What you describe is definetly not typical I have been using Ubuntu since the first release (Warty was it?) and never had that issue. In Breezy Firefox sucked but 1.5 is running well. I also know quite a few people using Ubuntu and they don't seem to have any problems you described either. So yeah nVidia proprietary driver if you got nVidia might help, that's as far I can guess really.

[PrimoTurbo]

I wonder if it's related to my ATI card? But I have used a different system all together with an nvidia card and have seen various programs lock up, like totem.

The icon bugs in gnome, try taking a panel with icon and making it big then making it really small like 19 pixels. Watch what happens to the icons, especially the ones in the task panel. For example the icon for Listen & Xchat get really messed up and cut off.

[Titanio2006]

same problem here. running ubuntu with nvidia.
all applications crash 2 or 3 times.
gnome-panel is the issue, i guess.

xp run without crashes.

Greetings from Chile.
Titanio