is there a system log or something i can look at to see what is going on in my computer. i just installed FC2 and i'm using a kernel i got offline somewhere to fix the 4 stack/nvidia thing. I also turned off a bunch of services i didnt think i needed. and every once in a while where things starts to crash ie firefox/nautilus/gnome panel... those are the only things that tend to crash but once they start they dont stop crashing every minute or so without a restart. so i want to see if the log will give me a hint as weather it is the services or the kerenl or something else. i looked in /var/log/ but i didnt find anything that would tell me, maybe i need to turn on the system logging?

try looking in /home/user/.xsession-errors (if you haven't already!). Also run all your programs from the command line and monitor the messages (most programs print warnings or errors).

well i ended up formatting like 5 minutes ago so i can dual boot windows/linux (couldnt handle the lack of games ). but i will see if if after the reinstall it keeps crashing and if so i will look in there. thanks for the info i wasnt aware that was where the log file would be.

/home/user is (almost) the only folder you can write to in normal use. This is to prevent accidental damage to the rest of your system.