Linux 14 help

[JimmyHAD]

I installed Linux 14 to replace 12 because banshee wouldn't play without freezing the screen, making the mouse unusable. So I went with the KDE format hoping that the Amarok music player had gotten over the former problem of 'stuttering' and requiring a reboot to get going again. I had encountered that from Fedora 5 up to Mint10.

So Mint14 was running like a Swiss watch and Amarok was humming along in the background flawlessly. I had done updates with the GUI after the install , a week or two ago, and along as required. So I downloaded a PDF and when I tried to open it Libre popped up and then disappeared. No document viewer.

I opened a terminal and did an aptitude update and upgrade. Got a new Mint14 image and a lot of other stuff. Rebooted and the PDF displayed with Ocular. All good.

Then I opened Mozilla Firefox. I had about 15 tabs open/saved and the system hung. Rebooted and things were working and then it hung again. I rebooted and closed 6 of the saved tabs. So far no hanging.

I guess it was the multiple tabs ? Anyone familiar with linux systems have any tips ?

[Steelstubble]

How long did you have firefox open and how much RAM do you have? Firefox has a memory leak like system for storing webpages in RAM. Firefox often won't free up RAM until you close the program which means if you have it open for extended periods of time using multiple tabs with lots of big web pages that you can overwhelm both RAM and swap eventually with just that program.

Edit: Or if you're me you forget to make a swap partition in the first place and all kinds of silliness happens.

[Tack]

It might have been the a RAM problem as steel mentioned but Mozilla has attempted to address that problem by configuring FF at installation with a page cache size that matches your available RAM size. Also, as I recall, FF 16 is the default with Mint 14.. 19.0 is available now. I don't run any debian based distros so don't know what your repository offers; you might want to investigate and install a more up to date version. Incidentally, 19.0 has a built-in PDF viewer - no add-on required.

I regularly have 12-20 tabs open and leave FF running for months at a time without restarting it - go figure. Maybe you just had a one time mystery hang up; it happens.

Good luck.

rs,
Tack

[JimmyHAD]

I've got 2gb of memory and a 4gig swap. Just checked the CPU and 66% running. Since I closed the 5 or 6 tabs after the reboot all is running well again. Still have 9 tabs and thunderbird open.

[Jimbo]

Sounds like a software issue rather than the OS. You can always try running top to take a look at who is using what etc.

I've been a bit of a Fedora fan since the mid 90s (well, red hat then but....). Recently, with the gnome 3 (aka MAC OS for linux) thing I swapped over to Centos 6. It is a very stable distro. I don't know much about mint but if ever it gets too pernickety, you could maybe give centos a spin.

James.