[vox] One more reason to prefer Linux...

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, David Hummel wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 12:41:10PM -0800, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> > 
> > > And behold, Micah Cowan flailed at a keyboard and did expound:
> > > 
> > > > The exception to this could be if a faulty video driver hung. But
> > > > of course, if this happened to Windows, you wouldn't be able to
> > > > get a task manager, either. :-)
> > > 
> > > Yes, this is true.  I hadn't thought of that.  But even if my Linux
> > > box had a faulty video driver, I'd still be able to SSH into it to
> > > examine the situation pretty easily.
> > 
> > As someone who has had to cope with exactly such problems in Linux, I
> > can assure you that you are wrong.
> > 
> > Bugs in ANY kernel code can bring your trusty Linux box to a
> > screeching halt... completely.
> 
> Yes, but the discussion is about crashes related to X, not the kernel.
> The point is that even if X freezes hard, the solution that Richard
> mentions is a viable approach to recover without rebooting (granted that
> networking is up, sshd is running, and one has a spare system to login
> from).

I have had crashes in the past related to video drivers hanging. Complete,
utter brain freeze, including networking. X depends on kernel code to
handle the video subsytem. This recurred until I upgraded the kernel.

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