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by tychuz 3537 days ago
When video drivers crash - do all GUI applications still crash with the display server?

I've toyed with Arch during Windows 7 times - after hearing how linux is more stable than windoze/windblowz - and then nVidia drivers crashed, X server crashed, aaand upon starting X - all GUI applications were closed.

Are. You. Friggin. Kidding me? People were talking about stability when such things happened? Linux stability compared to Windows 7 - zero. At that time.

Has it changed?

4 comments

You might also want to think about using a distribution that emphasizes stability more. Arch is a great distro for people who want a bleeding edge, but it's strength is not stability. Debian is probably the most stable, Ubuntu LTS releases are decent as well.
> Arch is a great distro for people who want a bleeding edge, but it's strength is not stability.

This is an often repeated myth that just isn't true, (unless you have [testing] enabled). I had a single Arch install survive for 3 years without any problems and that involved switching over to a new init system.

I only had to install Windows back on the machine because I went on to sell it and get a new one.

Nor Ubuntu, nor Debian produce nVidia drivers.
What do you mean? You can definitely install them on both.
I mean that nVidia drivers will be nVidia drivers made by nVidia - same ones on Debian, Ubuntu or Arch.
Yes but Debian and Ubuntu LTS both take more time to be sure everything is working and then don't mess with it. The "stable" bit there means less change so less chance of things breaking.
You can definitely install these on all there distress without a problem.
To be fair, none of my machines has an nVidia card, but with Intel GPUs, I have had not any trouble whatsoever in ~7 years.

(Performance is another matter, of course, but for regular desktop use, it does not matter that much.)

> Are. You. Friggin. Kidding me? People were talking about stability when such things happened? Linux stability compared to Windows 7 - zero.

I personally haven't had the video driver crash on me, but even so, I think a video driver is not the OS, so not sure what you're talking about.

Kernel panics would be more understandable comparison.

Yes