> I'll admit that I haven't been avidly following the whole thread going on
> regarding the problems that people have been having with Netscape as of late
> but it's gotten so bad recently that I've just got to throw in my own two
> cents....
>
> I'm running Netscape 4.5 here on my RH 5.2 machine w/2.2pre7-ac2 and have
> found that more and more often with the newer kernels its hanging up. Don't
> recall this happening in any of the 2.1.13x kernels that I'd tried, but with
> the 2.2pre kernels it's happening about every half hour to an hour now. Not
[snip]
I have also noticed increasing Netscape crash frequency (INCF
factor:) as kernel revisions head toward 2.2. I think the
problem is Netscape, but there isn't a lot we can do about
that for the moment.
The other day I turned Java completely off in 4.08 and it has not
crashed for nearly 3 days. This is with kernel 2.1.132.
It doesn't even seem to matter if I hit pages that use Java or not.
Just having it enabled seems to cause trouble. A simple HTML page
I have bookmarked will kill NS4.5 and 4.08 if I have Java turned on.
The same bookmarks didn't seem to cause trouble under 2.0.35 kernels.
I have noticed that when I watch Netscape run under strace, it makes
a huge number of network function calls, even when sitting idle.
Netscape seems to hit the networking libraries more than anything
else I have on my system. I can't really tell if there are fewer
network calls when Java is turned off or not, nor can I understand
why there would be if you are hitting non-Java pages. But, I have
a feeling Netscape is a little hokey down under anyway.
I have a modem only (56K) setup. At work I noticed that it did
die faster on DEC UNIX machines sitting on T3 lines. It also
helped there to turn off Java, but it still crashed on DEC UNIX
all the time.
> just when I'm browsing either, it frequently locks up when just picking up my
> e-mail or un-iconifying the window. I've found that by opening up more
> windows when browsing, I can cause the whole thing to just lock up that much
> more quickly than when running just a single browser window. Quite a pain
I sometimes hit a page of links and middle-button a bunch of windows
up, and I also notice a greater crash frequency. But I'd say that's
just from more networking calls being generated. Netscape gets
hung in a socket-fail/alarm loop it never seems to break out of.
Another one I see is a socket-fail/segv/alarm loop which indicates
yet another browser bug. I think it is supposed to automatically
send a crash report and die but once I hit kernels 2.1.13x and
higher that feature stopped working.
> Aside from just chucking out Netscape and moving off to some other browser
> (which isn't a viable alternative for me at this point), are there any
> suggestions as to what can be done to try to remedy this problem? Ideas?
Patiently wait for Netscape 5 and hope they do a better job?
I wish there was an alternative, but as ugly as Netscape is, there
really isn't any other choice right now.
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