Re: [Gnash-dev] KDE-3.5.6 crash due to firefox and gnash

[Martin Guy]

> >>>> Isn't it weird that a plugin could crash firefox and KDE/X?
> >>> I am 99% sure this is a bug in the OpenGL driver for your card. I would
> >>> suggest using the AGG renderer backend instead.

I'd love to blame the closed-source drivers, and they probably do
cause some of the crashes as well as being it out of our control to
fix them. But just being able to point the blame elsewhere doesn't
change the reality that using Gnash makes firefox and the X server
die, whereas the Adobe one doesn't.
I too have had gnash-gtk-opengl plugin make firefox burst and the
entire X window system die several times, something that I've never
seen in a decade, and I've now disinstalled the Gnash plugin just so
that I don't keep losing my work, sad but true.

With opengl, the cpu-intensive work of the rendering is done in the X
server rather than in gnash, and any bugs Gnash tickles in the large
and complex mesa or in closed-source drivers are gonna take the X
server out, rather than just having gnash die, which largely defeats
the point of running it as a separate process from firefox. GIven
this, the fact that cairo can take advantage of opengl is actually a
disadvantage since it too inherits the instability.

Add to that the fact that the agg renderer makes a better finished
result of animations quality-wise than the opengl or cairo renderers
and this might suggest going over to agg as the default renderer for
the next release.

Thoughts?

   M