[NCLUG] HELP! Keyboard Freezing!

[Jonathan Anscher]

i just recently moved to linux and enountered a major problem. the
keyboard froze after a few minutes of working with it. i have read
several reports of similar things happening, hoqwever, have heard no
definative answer to it. Upon shutting the computer down and
restarting it, keyboard function returns, however, i lose it fairly
quickly. we thought it might be an overheating program, perhaps cause
by a failure of the fan to operate properly under linux, but it did
not seem overheated at all. Another website suggested installing GPM,
some mouse software, but the installation requires libtinfo.so.5 which
is extremely rare and i have not been able to find. what can i do?

Distribution and version: RedHat 9
Kernel: 2.4.20-13.9
Hardware: Dell Inspiron 5000e, 700Mhz, 512 SDRAM
keyboard: laptop keyboard, no docking station