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Mathematica stole my X so I had to kill it

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg36912] Mathematica stole my X so I had to kill it
• From: Steven <hattons at speakeasy.net>
• Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 03:31:34 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Global Symmetry
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I'm running Mathematica 4.1 on SuSE Linux 8.0 with the KDE 3.0.3 and XFree86 4.0.2.  
I was trying to run one of the Mathematica Book -> Graphics Gallery -> 
Animations -> Rolling Square.  I don't recall the exact sequence of actions 
I took.  I believe I selected the cell with the square (the only cell in 
the notebook) and from the menu, Cell -> Animate Selected Graphics.  This 
resulted in a set of animation control buttons appearing in the bottom 
frame of the window. I clicked on one of these buttons, but nothing 
happened.  I looke back in the menu and saw M-y as a keyboard shorcut to 
run an animation.  I tried that with no result.  I clicked another button 
in graphics control set, and my X windows locked up.  This included the 
keyboard's ability to give me another display by using Ctl+Alt+F1.  I went 
to another system and ssh-ed in and found Mathematica had over 50% of my user 
resources, and was climbing.  The same was true for VM.  I have a gig of 
physical RAM.  Once I killed Mathematica, my X came back to life.

I've had several bad experiences with Mathematica and X.  I honestly believe there 
is/are bug(s) in the Linux implementation.  I would very much like to help 
isolate and fix these.  Have others had such problems?

STH