i seem to have a very odd problem.. almost everything has a problem with 'smearing'...

::tries to explain this better::

xchat for example, when i type something into the channel, and the screen scrolls down, what i typed overlaps the message that came before mine...

netscape, when i scroll up or down, the text 'runs' kinda like when u squish a bug against the wall and smear it accross it...

many programs exibit this odd behavior and i don't know what could possibly be the problem, anyone who could possibly shed some light on the subject would be greatly appreciated..

thanks in advance

Heh, very weird indeed.. What graphics card and which drivers are you using? And why not consider upgrading to Xorg ?

Try uncommenting the 'NOACCEL' or 'NOLINEAR' options in your X config file.

Try using a different Window Manager, i.e., if you're on KDE, switch to Gnome. And see if that happens again.

If not, update your WM.

Sounds known to me... did you update anything recently?

have you been updating libraries? sounds like somethings hanging.......
(are the programs that are hanging all use the gtk widget set)?

i had just recently upgraded from slack 9 to slack 10, which is when this problem originally occurred, the behavior is exhibited on all other window managers... i was thinking it could be a shared library problem, or a problem with hardware accel in X, however i never had any problems before with that

any error messages when you launch the programs for terminals?

Did you try noaccel?