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Date:      Tue, 20 Nov 2001 02:56:08 -0800
From:      "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
To:        "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>, <RoKlein@roklein.de>, "Chip" <chip@wiegand.org>
Cc:        <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: home pc use
Message-ID:  <006901c171b1$f549f760$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
In-Reply-To: <00cd01c171ac$ca0fa0e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>

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>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Anthony
>Atkielski
>Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 2:19 AM
>To: RoKlein@roklein.de; Chip
>Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
>Subject: Re: home pc use
>
>
>Robert writes:
>
>> Perhaps this was due to your buggy VIA
>> Southbridge, mentioned in another
>> thread, IIRC?
>
>That same "buggy" hardware runs Windows flawlessly.
>
>> Though KDE crashing possibly indicates a faulty
>> memory module / memory timing problems...
>
>The most likely cause is poorly written code.
>

This is absolutely not true.

If the Xserver is properly written you cannot lock up or crash your system
with KDE or any other buggy window manager.  Sure you can cause the window
manager to dump core or whatever, but those processes don't have the rights
into the hardware to lock it up.

However, with a buggy Xserver you can lock up your system with even a perfect
X program.  Even an Xserver that isn't necessairly buggy but instead gets
something back that's unexpected from the video card chipset can do this.
(because maybe the OEM modified the video chipset slightly)

It's not the best thing from a stability standpoint to run the Xserver on the
same system that you want to run the X clients on.  Due to the nature of PC
video
hardware, to get any kind of decent speed the X server must be written to have
direct access to the video hardware.  This is a violation of the idea in UNIX
that only the OS has the privilige to tamper with the hardware.  Thank you IBM
and your crappy video BIOS routines that caused the situation.



Ted Mittelstaedt                                       tedm@toybox.placo.com
Author of:                           The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide
Book website:                          http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com



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