In case you don't get a metaserver list:

• If you're using ISDN or DSL verify that your MTU is 1492, not 1500.
• Do not use a nameserver of Deutsche Telekom or T-Online.

March, 2011.
Launching a trunk gtk-v2 client (1.60.0+) with an old user's .crossfire folder caused a fatal crash.
Renaming the .crossfire folder resolved the issue.
Full diagnosis of the root cause has not been done.

September, 2010.
If you apply a bed of reality, hit q to quit, and something else, especially a keybind, in very quick succession, the client freezes up (at least on Linux).
killall -HUP crossfire-client-gtk2 will kill it, but most window manager functions do not appear to be successfull at closing the hung client.
It appears that the client keeps trying to do socket operations to send the commands to the now disconnected server. GDB shows it stuck much if the time in _ _kernel_vsyscall, but sometimes you can catch in in libpthread.so.
In past experience, _ _kernel_vsyscall can hang for about 4 minutes on Linux before it returns, still, after many, many minutes, the client does not die. mwedel suggested a possible setting for the socket that might help.
It looks like the client is very hard to kill if you do not have xkill or know how to go to a console to kill it, so this is a very unfriendly behavior. This has probably been an issue for a very long time, but just has not been noticed or reported.

EDIT March 2018 : kill -SIGHUP or kill -1 is not the best way to kill something.
kill -SIGKILL or kill -9 should kill any userspace program.

August, 2010.
The GTK-V2 client design specifies that various dialogs (spell, skills, config, etc) should not be drawn with the X close icon on the window frame.
This works for various window managers, but appears not to work under the default LXDE configuration on Mandriva 2010 Spring.
Another report said that it did not work under KDE 3.5.10 when kde-window-decorator was in use, though KDE is generally considered to not have this issue.
In any event, if X close icons appear on client dialogs, DO NOT dismiss them with the X icon .
This deletes the dialog and requires a client restart to show it again.
Use the Close button, on the lower button bar, to dismiss all client dialogs.

• This is fixed in SVN as of 2010/08/19.

~August, 2010 and earlier.
Various reports indicate that crossfire-client-gtk2 themes (colored text/spell window) no longer worked on some distributions when the client is launched from a user account.
Workarounds were found. All of them essentially launch the client like this: GTK_MODULES=“”; crossfire-client-gtk2.
In at least one instance of non-working themes, GTK_MODULES was set to canberra-gtk-module, but the settings for all reports is unknown.
It appears some theme engines are not compatible with crossfire-client-gtk2 theme code.
It is not yet known whether there is a way to alter the client so that its themes work properly without regard to the system GTK theme engine setting.

~July, 2010.
The GTK-V2 client with account-based login support has a bug in a character create button that makes it impossible to set up a character.
It is thought this bug is in 1.50 . Current SVN is fixed. The fix is an update to {prefix}/share/crossfire-client/glade-gtk2/dialogs.glade , and does not require a re-compile.

See also further down 1.50.0

Various reports of broken chat/say/tell/shout with trunk servers are reported:

• Meflin reports 1.11 clients on trunk server: chat/say does not work. It is not known if this is widely experienced or not. Fedora is still on 1.11 (and is what was in use regarding this report).
• Invidious user report via Meflin is for Debian Stable 5.0.4 and current GTK V2 Unix Client 1.50.0.dev-r13535M (using gtk-v2.glade) chat. Say and shout do work.
• Kero has an issue of this nature, but details are not recorded.
• This may only be an issue when playing a trunk servers only?

~July, 2010.
Two users are known to have experienced a case where the gtk-v2 client (widely varying versions) locks up when a non-default .glade layout is selected (other than gtk-v2).
When running under gdb, it appears the client is locked up in metaserver code.

The first observation by kbulgrien was on Mandriva 2007 (low memory, slow CPU),
but various other Mandriva 2007 systems did not exhibit the problem.
Deleting or renaming the ~/.crossfire/gdefaults2 would allow the client to work.
When the system was upgraded to Mandriva 2009.0, the problem disappeared.

The second time the issue was noted by MasseR using Ubuntu 9.10.
In this case, a workaround was discovered. If the client was launched specifying both -opengl -window_xml <any.glade> , the client started properly.
If both opengl and an alternate .glade layout is specified in the configuration file, the problem recurred.

This client is affected by Bug #3020531 The Create Character button does nothing.
The bug affects only usage with new 1.50+ servers that support account based logins.

ChangeLog entry : Create Character Bug

In short : When the player has logged in and wants to create a character, then a GUI window shows up to enter a Name and either hit “Create Character” or to “Cancel” .
When clicking to create, nothing happens.

The Creation of a character at the version 1.50.0 is a mix of new GUI code and the old “traditional” way of character-creation in the info-message pane and command-line.
After having clicked “Create Character” , the process to choose the race happens inside the info-message panel. Here the user gets at first asked to chose the stat values, then to chose the race of the character.

Adding a diff patch since the link to viewvc does not work anymore on sourceforge.
Two times one tailing :space: too much in {prefix}/share/crossfire-client/glade-gtk2 ,
easy to fix manually, just needs to find the lines :

--- dialogs.glade-orig	2018-03-18 11:19:58.000518668 -0100
+++ dialogs.glade	2018-03-18 11:20:26.833516979 -0100
@@ -1189,7 +1189,7 @@ The server determines what map tiles are
                                       </packing>
                                     </child>
                                     <child>
-                                      <widget class="GtkAlignment" id="config_displaymode_alignment ">
+                                      <widget class="GtkAlignment" id="config_displaymode_alignment">
                                         <property name="visible">True</property>
                                         <property name="xalign">0</property>
                                         <property name="yalign">0</property>
@@ -3145,7 +3145,7 @@ Character Selection</property>
                     <property name="visible">True</property>
                     <property name="layout_style">spread</property>
                     <child>
-                      <widget class="GtkButton" id="button_create_new_char ">
+                      <widget class="GtkButton" id="button_create_new_char">
                         <property name="label" translatable="yes">Create Character</property>
                         <property name="visible">True</property>
                         <property name="can_focus">True</property>

OLD Link:
Replace the broken dialogs.glade file with a recent version that is downloadable here.

In below versions called “Double Text” and “Double up Keypress” Bugs were re-solved short time before the release of the version 1.12.0 of the client.
The problem did not occur, when “Popup Windows” had been chosen in the Menu > Client > Configure > General
and hit the button “Save” to save to the file gdefaults as popups set to 1
and re-start the client to re-read the gdefaults configuration file.
The user could have altered that entry manually, too, but that file does not exist when the client gets installed newly
and the default is set to 0 inside the source code
in function init_client_vars() in file common/init.c as variable want_config[CONFIG_POPUPS] = FALSE; .
Another possibility would have been the cmdline-parameter -popups added when starting the client from a command.com, cmd.exe or xterm terminal shell,
but the -help parameter claimed, that -popups would have been the default, and why using that option, when it would have been the default ?
The Popup Login-Window is nice to have, but the tiny jumping window to press to play Again or Not after applying a save-bed is a reason to want to disable these popups.
See also the Changelog : Keyboard input impossible or confusing

• Double text issues still a problem on recent Ubuntu (Gutsy, Hardy, Intrepid) based 64bit systems when using the GTK2 (trunk and branch) client.
  • Compile the client using the latest source code resolves this issue, or one needs to use the gtkv-1 client
  • The 1.50.0 client does not have this problem.
  • See also Bug #1876788.

• Dec-23-2007: A Mandriva 2008 user reports doubled up keypresses in crossfire-client-gtk2 that were previously only reported for version 1.9.1 on ubuntu. The report indicates gtk2 2.12.1-2.1 was present. The reporter indicates that the doubled up keypresses DID NOT occur when typing in the metaserver dialog. The GTK1 client is unaffected.

crossfire-client-gtk2 under Ubuntu Edgy (v1.9.1-1) and Feisty (v1.9.1-2) (untested on other versions or releases)

• We've heard there's a weird seemingly ubuntu-specific bug in ubuntu's package of gcfclient2, with it repeating each keypress twice when typing.
  • Feb-22-2007: Bug reported at LaunchPad, https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/crossfire-client/+bug/87194
  • Sept-18-2007: Player feedback indicates this problem has been “resolved” in v1.10.0 of the client or if the client is built from SVN source