nvidia

[sunny-O0WJhd4tT3hg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org (Laura Conrad)]

>>>>> "Derek" == Derek Martin <invalid-yPs96gJSFQo51KKgMmcfiw at public.gmane.org> writes:

    Derek> There is, sadly, no way around that, other than to restart the
    Derek> offending process before it happens.  Once your system starts
    Derek> swapping, EVERYTHING is competing for scarce computing resources,
    Derek> including the X server (which controls the redraw of the screen).
    Derek> Changing the driver is unlikely to have any noticable effect.  

Yes, changing the driver was for a different problem.  The "nvidia"
driver, which ubuntu started using when I put in the new video card, was
hanging X, intermittently but well before firefox took over the
system. The "nouveau" driver doesn't do that. (The "nv" driver, which
used to be the open source driver of choice, didn't seem to get the
information about the card right, and would only run my monitor at some
ridiculously low resolution.)  I guess "nouveau" also doesn't have some
of the features that cause people to put up with "nvidia", but I don't
seem to need them.

Maybe going to the video card was a stupid waste of time, but people do
buy them for a reason, and I did already have it.  I should have put it
in when I went to this slightly newer system from the old and creaky one
last summer, but I was desperate for a working computer and couldn't
find the DVI cable.

If there's some reason why having your monitor hooked up via a VGA cable
to the onboard graphics card is *better* than having it hooked up via
the DVI cable to an nVidia AGP card, I'm not sure I want to know at this
point, having spent all the time googling for what to do to make it
work.  But people can try telling me anyway.  It does sound like that
was what people were saying a couple of weeks ago, but I assumed they
just didn't understand the situation.

    >> and using chromium-browser for everything it works for.  With
    >> firefox running only a couple of tabs for the things chromium
    >> doesn't work on, it takes a lot longer for firefox to leak all the
    >> memory out of the machine.

    Derek> Or that.  But you haven't really solved the problem, just
    Derek> delayed it (though that might be satisfactory).

It seems to be helping.  It's a nuisance to be doing testing on alpha
software (which was pre-alpha until a few days ago).  And of course I
need to restart chromium-browser every day when I get the new copy.  But
since firefox is doing practically nothing, restarting it isn't a
nuisance at all.  So I just run "top" from time to time, and when
firefox goes over 20% of memory, I restart it.  The major problems were
when it was over 30%.

The chromium-browser is actually getting better at a very gratifying
rate.  The major problem for which I needed firefox got fixed yesterday.
"copy link address" wasn't copying, so it was hard to browse and then put
links into html or emails, but yesterday magically it started doing it.
There's still some reason why I can't publish a blog entry on my
wordpress blog <http://www.laymusic.org/wordpress>, and it still doesn't
run flash, so I'm still using firefox for that stuff.  But as long as
you're killing firefox tabs as soon as you open them, it's easy to
mistake firefox for a well-behaved program.  

At least if you don't play music with it and then try to use the sound
system from another program.

-- 
Laura   (mailto:lconrad-O0WJhd4tT3hg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097	233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139   

When I die and there's a memorial service, I want you to go to the
piano and play _The Man I Love_ in my key. If I don't come out on that
stage, then you'll know I'm gone.

Kitty Carlisle Hart, (Quoted at her memorial service, where they did
in fact play _The Man I Love._)