Yes, you read correctly and not really related to vendetta. :P

Since I upgraded to the latest NVIDIA drivers X randomly freezes when I use Firefox and noticably often when visiting this forum. Maybe it's the alpha blended background or the amount of text. *shrug*

The only way to get X back running is to use the SAK and rerun my init scripts. Which is getting anoying.

I've heard others experienced freezes too. Before I go back to an older version. Is there any known workaround?

I reverted, and it doesn't do this for me.

Side point, its only some threads, most probably certain characters. My guess is that its the nvidia implementation of the RENDER extention that goes bonkers again. The RENDER extention is used amongst other things, for the AA text.

So Mozilla->freetype->X Render -> lockup, is my personal guess. Nvidia haven't been very good at that in the past, really. : /

Sounds like one of the known issues. Are you experiencing the freezes where you can move the mouse but you can't click on anything or use the keyboard?

It was happening to me until I ditched Gnome. Haven't had a single one of those lockups since.

Yeah I could still move the mouse.
I disabled font antialiasing in the gnome font preferences. Which seems to have fixed it.
Also made Gtk apps also seem quite a bit snappier.
The downside is that the fonts look like they did 5 years ago. :P (Okay not exactly ... the improved hinting is still noticable)

It definatly was a gnome problem for me because I haven't experienced that type of lockup since I switched to KDE. Though some people have reported similar lockups with KDE which is odd because I've had it happen on multiple computers and all of them were fixed by switching to KDE. It could be that multiple bugs produce the same symptoms.

See : https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2155

I would suggest considering moving to another DE/WM such as KDE or XFCE and seeing if that fixes the problem for you with font AA enabled.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting read.
I like GNOME though and don't need AA fonts. :P

Hmm. Never had it happen with either here. BTW, font antialiasing in Gnome has nothing to do with Gnome. It's all freetype2, which is the same system KDE uses for its font antialiasing. Therefore, if it's an antialiasing problem, switching from Gnome to KDE should not make a difference.

As to XRENDER, well, that's up to interpretation. It works perfectly for me (although sometimes combining OpenGL and XCOMPOSITE (which uses XRENDER) causes crashes and freezes). For some people, it doesn't work. /me blames the hardware

I use AA Fonts in KDE Fine with no lockups. But on the same box, Gnome will cause the types of lockups described.

okay, tracked down to :

# Enabling this made scrolling stop lagging, but crashes X with the 7xxx drivers of nivida. Fucktards.
Option "RenderAccel" "off"
# Option "RenderAccel" "on"

yey for nvidia. Disable the hardware acceleration of alpha blending and it will work.

meh ... but that's soo slow :/

as said. nvidia has lately broken their hardware acceleration in their hardware acceleration graphics drivers.

Go nvidia.

so thats why...