frankly i prefer the BSOD because most of the time one can find out where the problem might lie (a certain driver dll for example)

i have had three machines freeze hopelessly under linux (fedora 3)
- via epia m6000
- ibm thinkpad x31
- p3 700 desktop machine
the last one froze just now after clicking the close button from firefox
and with freeze i mean freeze, no mouse, no keyboard, no ssh

one might find interesting that a certain genesys logic usb harddisk controller (GL811) is involved in ALL (one way or another) cases of the freezes. but even then, i would expect at least a kernel panic and not a freeze. interesting to note is also that the same machines booted under windows (w2k/xp) have never hung or crashed using the usb harddisks, though they were not tested as extensively (quantitatively).

i certainly cannot commend the 'stability' of linux anymore. i have had win2k boxes running stabler and with longer uptime than any of my linux installation attempts so far.

for fairness i must add that i am still to be considered n00b in linux (at least compared to my knowledge/experience under windows dating back to dos times). but compared to the broad average some have already called me linux experienced, though this is mostly due to my acquaintance with the command line and some more or less advanced linux commands. nonetheless freezes are uncalled for.

whenever my box crashes it dumps an error message on the terminal. X would hide such a thing.

and it usually doesn't crash. I've only had it crash due to overheating of my cpu, and, once water spilled into an ide cable.
(don't ask how this happened, it defys physics as human-kind knows it)

there's almost certainly an error message not showing up because you're running X, and you can always check the system logs leading up to the crash. something I think you'll find very difficult on a windows box.

I also think that you'll find an example of some of the linux-style error messages leading up to a crash in the BSOD screen saver you mentioned.

to illustrate my point, let me tell you a short story.
my server once, quite literally, had bits of it explode and I still got an error message when I came back to it. after attempting to restart it, just for the hell of it, no speaker beeps, no response of any kind.. and still and error message.. I think that's impressive.

I don't like either - but, as opposed to your experience, the few
lockups that I have encountered in Linux over the last 6 years
were due to a) faulty firmware on the comp or b) faulty NVidia drivers.

In windows BSODs for me most of the time happen due
to windows components problems, not device drivers,
and often enough I come back to my XP desktop at
work to have it tell me that it had to re-boot due to
an unrecoverable error (which annoys the heck out
of me).


Cheers,
Tink

How about an option for neither. I hate the blue screen of death and get annoyed if my Linux system locks up which thankfully has mostly been caused by me tinkering, so I usually know how to solve the problem.

Is "stabler" some kind of package you can download..

In all fairness.. I have excellent uptimes with my Linux boxes and servers without any problems. I tend to blame the unstableness on the administrator of the box, not the software used..

If your a newbie in Linux like you claim you are, couldn't you or shouldn't you be blaming your lack of expertise on an Operating System your not totally familiar with, the issues your having? I would instead of just pointing the finger to make yourself feel better..

The thing I learned when first dealing with Linux is to know your hardware. Hard lockups or freezes are usually bad configurations with your hardware. Learn to configure your hardware appropiately with whatever OS your using and it most likely has a slighter chance on freezes.

Actually I found most window crashes now that occur with Windows XP and Windows 2000 is actually the result of having a bad stick of memory.

In my experience, the leading cause of BSODs for me has been installing and running Microsoft products.


I'll be here all week, 2 shows a night. Try the veal!

Umm... My linux box hasn't frozen in over 6 months (when I installed)... maybe you have a problem?

my computer has never frozen, ok my winXP laptop has before, so has my linuxbox while its booted into windows, but for linux no freezes no crashes(unless you include the time I didn't know how to turn the computer off

back when I was a n00b I started off with a bad debian install disk, that was a interesting story especially since I started out with xdm and fluxbox,

DaWallace
could you be more specific about the error messages which X is hiding. i admit that i almost always have X running, but i also almost always have a console or more open in X.

i have searched through dmesg and /var/log/messages, there never were any crash related messages. i once noted the last messages before the crash, and after the crash there were a bunch of new messages (startup related) but no crash message after the last noted message before the crash (yes, i was staring at the console running tail -f /var/log/messages while waiting for the system to freeze).

the problem with my problem is, without any meaningful error message i don't even know where to begin to look.

I definitely prefer a freeze
Just something about the BSOD that troubles me