On Wed, 26 Feb 1997 wonko@madness.tmok.com wrote:

> Jeff Thieleke drunkenly mumbled...
> > 
> > > my experience with running Navigator on a linux box is as follows:
> > > 
> > > i have a 386dx33 (no FPU) with 20M RAM that runs linux.  every version of 
> > > Navigator from 2.x to 3.x (i haven't played with 4.x yet) failed to work on
> > > my linux box no matter what i did to it.  didn't matter what libs i had or
> > > whatever was suggested i do to make it work.  it eventually locked up the 
> > > console to the point of my only route of escape was to telnet in from another
> > > machine and do a shutdown from there.  locked the console 100% of the time.
> > > usually got about 5-10 minutes of running time before it happened.  ok, got a
> > 
> > 
> > I have seen this too on my NetBSD machine.  It only seems to happen when I
> > use the right mouse button operations, though.  
> 
> hmm, it was nothing that wierd.  locked up no matter what i did.  i noticed if
> i disabled Java & JavaScript it ran longer before it crashed, but still always
> crashed.  *sigh*
> 
> -wonko

I have seen Netscape crash *way* too often.  Everything from 2.00 to 3.00
including all the betas and final versions is way too unstable.  It is to
a web browser what Windows is to an operating system. It is okay if you
want to use it for browsing simple pages, but any complex web page
(especially frames and Java) will kill it.  Disabling Java and running in
8 bpp mode tends to make it live a bit longer.

However, I've never seen it crash a machine or X server.  I've used it on
Linux and a bit on SunOs.  Netscape just dissapears.  You'll lose any
unsent messages and any downloads will stop, but at least X is still
healthy.  Maybe some window managers are more sensitive to whatever
Netscape does.

However 3.01 gold seems rather stable compared to any other version when
used for web browsing.  I'm not even sure I've seen it crash on my Linux
box yet.
However, web page editing is totally screwed up.  You *will* get random
strings in the middle of your text and it will crash if you actually try
to get work done.  Don't ever try to get real work done in the editor.


|  Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>              |
|  Home page:  http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/     |
|  "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to   |
|  depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ  |