IDLE has suddenly become FAWLTY - so should I be hitting it with a big stick, or what?

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Tue Aug 26 19:42:09 EDT 2014


On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 9:25 AM, Twirlip2 <ahrodg at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I do really mean "continuously". I'm hopelessly addicted to listening to repeats of classic comedy programmes on Radio 4 Extra; I often listen at bedtime, and first thing in the morning; and I keep my computer running 24/7 (shutting it down only when I'm away from home overnight). Since I require Python in order to listen to my beloved radio programmes reliably (don't get me started on the subject of the thrice-accursed BBC website!), I therefore have IDLE running all the time, very probably sometimes for weeks on end.
>
> There have been a few times when IDLE has become unresponsive, or awkward, in some way(s) - which I'm afraid I can't clearly remember, because it only happens every few days, and never bothers me that much - and then I do shut it down and restart it.
>
> My computer is also a 32-bit one, which I built in (believe it or not) 2003; it has only 768MB of RAM (and used to have even less).  Until this year I was also (believe it or not) using Windows 98SE. (No problems with IDLE on that, either, that I can remember.)
>

Yeah, that's how I used to use Idle too. I'd fire it up basically as
part of the bootup sequence (My Computer, Drive C, Desktop, Firefox,
Chrome, RosMud, and Idle 3.x), and never shut it down. These days, I
tend to fire it up when I want it and shut it down when I'm done.
However, that could be because this particular XP installation is
getting long in the tooth, and I've been seeing issues switching to
Firefox after it's been running for a while. Some day I'll probably
throw Debian onto this box, but at the moment, it's my only real
Windows computer left, and since I've pledged to support Windows with
certain of my projects, it's best I actively use Windows sometimes.

On my Linux boxes (mostly some version of Debian, but with hardware
like you describe, I'd be looking at AntiX), I don't generally use
Idle at all - I just hit Ctrl-Alt-T and type "python" or "python3",
and use command-line Python instead.

ChrisA



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